We do. But we won’t. The English public are far too weak now.
Wages have been on the decline versus inflation since the Tories came into power. Be it through Brexit failures, covid mismanagement or the current energy crisis.
Don’t forget labours 2019 manifesto included a 2nd referendum on Brexit, 4.3% increase in health spending and a stricter goal towards net 0 emissions which may have seen a reduced dependency on Oil and gas.
Edit: oh yes and nationalising public sectors. Including the rail company. And our energy companies which are in an even deeper crisis.
Yes, but too many people have swallowed the bullshit to bother.
We should have had one after the brexit vote.
So many self-defeating comments on here it’s pathetic.
I’m all for some coordinated action. I think if the price increases at the pumps and on the grocery shelves continue, it’s going to be inevitable. People historically are spurred into action when they are cold and hungry. I think you’ll see real unrest come winter, when it’s too expensive for families to heat the house and put food on the table.
Yes, yes, yes. A million times yes.
Fuck this lot. They’re all fine, they don’t give a shit about ordinary people. And, sadly, I include the limes of Labour and the Lib Dems in that statement, they just care a lot more than the tories.
As things stand, this country is far too brainwashed by right-wing propaganda to go on another general strike. We are genuinely putting up with grievances that other nations would have rioted over. Take France for example, fuel prices went up and the people turned their cities into a glass floor overnight. They’d be weeping if they had to pay *our* prices for petrol.
England’s had a grand total of two riots since the Conservatives took power in 2010. None had anything to do with the cost of living, economic grievances, NHS under-funding, or the gradual erosion of our freedoms that mainly came under Theresa May and Priti Patel. Tottenham was sparked by the police killing of a local black man. Swansea was sparked by yobs who interrupted a peaceful vigil held to mourn a local who died from a drug overdose.
Mass civil unrest won’t happen until the people have lost virtually everything. And given the cost of living right now, we are *kinda* close to that point. Maybe when a few million more people lose their homes and have to subscribe to food banks.
Another thing… peaceful demonstrations won’t work. We’ve had million man marches to oppose both Brexit and the Iraq War and both fell on deaf ears.
The Tories are playing a dangerous game here. I am not looking forward to watching things kick off.
The now mythical “general strike” and half-hearted efforts to organise one simply make labour organising look stupid.
Far better to have a wave of industry specific strikes which will actually happen than to lull ourselves to sleep at night in our freezing houses with dreams of The Big One which will fix everything.
Without mass Unionised labor, it will never happen…there is no sense of common purpose and organisation.
No. We need the Government to raise the living wage to equal it. If they don’t,it’s goodbye tories at the next election.
I would… but I can’t afford to.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Yes as if we don’t take action then the government and its corporate backers will continue to exploit us.
Absolutely.
And when the protest starts, remember to wear good shoes, write a phone number of someone you’d call if arrested on your arm with Sharpie, and lastly switch to pin unlock on your phone if you use swipe, thumb, or face recognition.
If you work in an industry that has unions and can afford to strike without it affecting your income or future employment prospects, you’re probably not in poverty.
Huff and harr about strikes and unions all you want, they’re the only way for the working class to project their power in any meaningful way short of mass violence. General strikes have toppled kings before (see Leopold III of Belgium, a man hated by the post-war world for making Dunkirk necessary), they can certainly be used to deal with this band of jumped-up public school kleptocrats.
Funny how the working class’s deal in society has gotten worse as more have fallen for capitalist propaganda that unions and striking are undesirable, unnecessary, associated with “the wrong sort of people” or whatever.
Every civilization has to fall sometime. Rip west
It’s the only way.
In ancient Rome when the working class were fed up with the treatment from the upper class, they would just collectively leave town for months at a time and leave the establishment to sort things out for themselves. I doubt the country could function if 90% of workers sacked it of for even a couple of days.
Privitisation and globalisation has made this country too reliant on others when they raise the prices enevitably prices will raise at home as well thats how it works and untill we start relying on ourselves more prices will soar the times of cheap energy have come to an end and other countries will grab every penny they can from this country with unfair trade
It depends what the aim of the strike is.
If it is to “make things the same as they were 3 years ago” it might be popular but I doubt it is achievable because the world has changed since then. Fuel and food are not going to suddenly become as cheap, in real terms, as they were before Brexit/Covid/Ukraine.
If the aim is to share the pain evenly so nobody suffers excessively, then that is far more likely to be achievable.
It is worth noting that individual strikes are aimed at getting large pay rises for a small number of workers, so that they can carry on as normal while everyone else suffers.
A general strike would need to address the needs of low paid/non-unioniesed workers, as well as people on benefits. That would require other groups to accept that they might have to live with being slightly less well off than before.
It’s the government that sets the living wage.
Ok t used to be free collective bargaining, but Tony Blair introduced the minimum wage.
Therefore it’s the government responsibility .Set it too low & workers will take action , including strike action
I wish it was about living standards and about housing. there are landlords with 10+ property milking young generation and the young generation like myself cant get a mortgage big enough to afford decent home. all i want is a house to make it into a home not my landlord turning me into cash cow and robbing me.
Strike for energy sector to be bought back into the hands of UK? take public transport out of corporation greed? help the young get into better jobs and not live with a shit debt called student loan finance? how about increase teacher’s pay check.
An opposite of Betteridges law, that’s a first!
Sad to say but we need riot at downing street etc, we need a major overhual of our political system and a purge of MP’s and all its corruption.
Wasn’t the last one an epic fail that resulted in worse conditions for those who went on strikes, not better?
What we really need is for people – particularly young people – to stop staying at home in their masses on election nights.
A third of eligible voters not bothering is scandalous.
Absolutely, how else is everyone going to realise that the government is solely in favour for the rich. Every worker in this country should be earning at least 20% more than they receive in wages at this present time.
That’s the ones that aren’t paid NAT living wage
The Sun would release a big article calling it WOKE and everyone would go home.
We absolutely do. We need to ask ourselves – what if the poor aren’t the problem. The rich get richer, poor get poorer. It keep getting worse. Something has to give. Stop blaming immigrants and single mothers, the problem is the fact that our country, and the world, is run by middle/upper class men.
We 100% need a general strike. Or possibly a Guy Fawkes type plot….
Tatcher Era coming hard. Britain going back to the 1970s. Maybe we need another Thatcher. Someone has to make some hard decisions.
Don’t blame those that strike, blame the organisation that were given due warning to address their issues. If they are just then the pressure ought be on those organisations.
Yes. I’ve had e-fucking-nough. I don’t care what you think about how the unions went too far all those years ago, we’re British for fuck sake, we can’t take this lying down. No excuses, turn the place upside-fucking down if we have to. Fuck the royal pedos, fuck the Tory government, and fuck you Boris Johnson.
Imagine comparing bourgeois activist Londoners in 2022 to the 1926 general strike. They are not comparable at all
Nobody will strike or do anything other then sit online and whinge about how difficult everything is getting the governments fucking everybody over more and more by the day and still nobody is doing anything or will do anything
35 comments
We do. But we won’t. The English public are far too weak now.
Wages have been on the decline versus inflation since the Tories came into power. Be it through Brexit failures, covid mismanagement or the current energy crisis.
Don’t forget labours 2019 manifesto included a 2nd referendum on Brexit, 4.3% increase in health spending and a stricter goal towards net 0 emissions which may have seen a reduced dependency on Oil and gas.
Edit: oh yes and nationalising public sectors. Including the rail company. And our energy companies which are in an even deeper crisis.
Yes, but too many people have swallowed the bullshit to bother.
We should have had one after the brexit vote.
So many self-defeating comments on here it’s pathetic.
I’m all for some coordinated action. I think if the price increases at the pumps and on the grocery shelves continue, it’s going to be inevitable. People historically are spurred into action when they are cold and hungry. I think you’ll see real unrest come winter, when it’s too expensive for families to heat the house and put food on the table.
Yes, yes, yes. A million times yes.
Fuck this lot. They’re all fine, they don’t give a shit about ordinary people. And, sadly, I include the limes of Labour and the Lib Dems in that statement, they just care a lot more than the tories.
As things stand, this country is far too brainwashed by right-wing propaganda to go on another general strike. We are genuinely putting up with grievances that other nations would have rioted over. Take France for example, fuel prices went up and the people turned their cities into a glass floor overnight. They’d be weeping if they had to pay *our* prices for petrol.
England’s had a grand total of two riots since the Conservatives took power in 2010. None had anything to do with the cost of living, economic grievances, NHS under-funding, or the gradual erosion of our freedoms that mainly came under Theresa May and Priti Patel. Tottenham was sparked by the police killing of a local black man. Swansea was sparked by yobs who interrupted a peaceful vigil held to mourn a local who died from a drug overdose.
Mass civil unrest won’t happen until the people have lost virtually everything. And given the cost of living right now, we are *kinda* close to that point. Maybe when a few million more people lose their homes and have to subscribe to food banks.
Another thing… peaceful demonstrations won’t work. We’ve had million man marches to oppose both Brexit and the Iraq War and both fell on deaf ears.
The Tories are playing a dangerous game here. I am not looking forward to watching things kick off.
The now mythical “general strike” and half-hearted efforts to organise one simply make labour organising look stupid.
Far better to have a wave of industry specific strikes which will actually happen than to lull ourselves to sleep at night in our freezing houses with dreams of The Big One which will fix everything.
Without mass Unionised labor, it will never happen…there is no sense of common purpose and organisation.
No. We need the Government to raise the living wage to equal it. If they don’t,it’s goodbye tories at the next election.
I would… but I can’t afford to.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Yes as if we don’t take action then the government and its corporate backers will continue to exploit us.
Absolutely.
And when the protest starts, remember to wear good shoes, write a phone number of someone you’d call if arrested on your arm with Sharpie, and lastly switch to pin unlock on your phone if you use swipe, thumb, or face recognition.
If you work in an industry that has unions and can afford to strike without it affecting your income or future employment prospects, you’re probably not in poverty.
Huff and harr about strikes and unions all you want, they’re the only way for the working class to project their power in any meaningful way short of mass violence. General strikes have toppled kings before (see Leopold III of Belgium, a man hated by the post-war world for making Dunkirk necessary), they can certainly be used to deal with this band of jumped-up public school kleptocrats.
Funny how the working class’s deal in society has gotten worse as more have fallen for capitalist propaganda that unions and striking are undesirable, unnecessary, associated with “the wrong sort of people” or whatever.
Every civilization has to fall sometime. Rip west
It’s the only way.
In ancient Rome when the working class were fed up with the treatment from the upper class, they would just collectively leave town for months at a time and leave the establishment to sort things out for themselves. I doubt the country could function if 90% of workers sacked it of for even a couple of days.
Privitisation and globalisation has made this country too reliant on others when they raise the prices enevitably prices will raise at home as well thats how it works and untill we start relying on ourselves more prices will soar the times of cheap energy have come to an end and other countries will grab every penny they can from this country with unfair trade
It depends what the aim of the strike is.
If it is to “make things the same as they were 3 years ago” it might be popular but I doubt it is achievable because the world has changed since then. Fuel and food are not going to suddenly become as cheap, in real terms, as they were before Brexit/Covid/Ukraine.
If the aim is to share the pain evenly so nobody suffers excessively, then that is far more likely to be achievable.
It is worth noting that individual strikes are aimed at getting large pay rises for a small number of workers, so that they can carry on as normal while everyone else suffers.
A general strike would need to address the needs of low paid/non-unioniesed workers, as well as people on benefits. That would require other groups to accept that they might have to live with being slightly less well off than before.
It’s the government that sets the living wage.
Ok t used to be free collective bargaining, but Tony Blair introduced the minimum wage.
Therefore it’s the government responsibility .Set it too low & workers will take action , including strike action
I wish it was about living standards and about housing. there are landlords with 10+ property milking young generation and the young generation like myself cant get a mortgage big enough to afford decent home. all i want is a house to make it into a home not my landlord turning me into cash cow and robbing me.
Strike for energy sector to be bought back into the hands of UK? take public transport out of corporation greed? help the young get into better jobs and not live with a shit debt called student loan finance? how about increase teacher’s pay check.
An opposite of Betteridges law, that’s a first!
Sad to say but we need riot at downing street etc, we need a major overhual of our political system and a purge of MP’s and all its corruption.
Wasn’t the last one an epic fail that resulted in worse conditions for those who went on strikes, not better?
What we really need is for people – particularly young people – to stop staying at home in their masses on election nights.
A third of eligible voters not bothering is scandalous.
Absolutely, how else is everyone going to realise that the government is solely in favour for the rich. Every worker in this country should be earning at least 20% more than they receive in wages at this present time.
That’s the ones that aren’t paid NAT living wage
The Sun would release a big article calling it WOKE and everyone would go home.
We absolutely do. We need to ask ourselves – what if the poor aren’t the problem. The rich get richer, poor get poorer. It keep getting worse. Something has to give. Stop blaming immigrants and single mothers, the problem is the fact that our country, and the world, is run by middle/upper class men.
We 100% need a general strike. Or possibly a Guy Fawkes type plot….
Tatcher Era coming hard. Britain going back to the 1970s. Maybe we need another Thatcher. Someone has to make some hard decisions.
Don’t blame those that strike, blame the organisation that were given due warning to address their issues. If they are just then the pressure ought be on those organisations.
Yes. I’ve had e-fucking-nough. I don’t care what you think about how the unions went too far all those years ago, we’re British for fuck sake, we can’t take this lying down. No excuses, turn the place upside-fucking down if we have to. Fuck the royal pedos, fuck the Tory government, and fuck you Boris Johnson.
Imagine comparing bourgeois activist Londoners in 2022 to the 1926 general strike. They are not comparable at all
Nobody will strike or do anything other then sit online and whinge about how difficult everything is getting the governments fucking everybody over more and more by the day and still nobody is doing anything or will do anything