Thursday 10 March 2011

The struggle in Wisconsin

I just sent the following letter to the Manchester Evening News:


"I am disappointed in the MEN's complete lack of coverage of the historic ongoing fight over workers' rights in Wisconsin, where a bill was passed through the state senate today (Thursday) to ban unionisation in the public sector after bei...ng delayed for several weeks by a several thousand-strong occupation of the capitol building which was massively supported on the streets and even briefly joined by police officers in defiance of orders to evict them, and where the local trade union federation recently passed a motion to prepare for a general strike to force the act to be repealed. This is an example we can take inspiration from in Britain. If Manchester Town Hall had been occupied yesterday morning (Wednesday) and the Council had been forced to take the time to consider the option of refusing to pass a cuts budget, it might have started a wave of Council rebellions across the country which could have derailed the government's whole agenda, and a national and ultimately global general strike is the only option which will take us out of the quagmire of governments bought out or held hostage by financial speculators and forced to brutalise public services for private profit."