Lorry drivers, empty shelves and a vicious strike
Is there such a thing as a right-wing strike?
September 2000. Lorry drivers are on strike against rising fuel prices. Britain's at a standstill. The scenes on TV are evocative of 28 Days Later: panic buying, mental queues at petrol stations, empty supermarket shelves and anxious old ladies moaning that their local Tesco is running out of supplies. I remember seeing my old university teacher, a staunch leftie Hullite by the name of Shaddy. "Militancy is back, Shaddy", I went, "surely it cannot be a bad thing? These people are taking a stand against the government". I must have sounded like such a naïve prick.
Shaddy shook his head. "Nooo", he said. "You know how I feel about New Lerh-bah, but this time they're doing the right thing not giving up to the strikers". I was taken aback.
"What they're doing is seriously reactionary", he continued, explaining why bringing the country to a standstill in the name of lower tax for their own exclusive benefit was wrong. "It's not the Government they should go for", he added, "instead it's the speculators, the big oil companies, they control the lion's share of the oil price and make zillions out of it".
Eight years later, and I can finally see what Shaddy meant. Those eerie scenes are back. Hauliers are on strike across Europe. They've just kicked off in England again and last week, in Spain, they were at the helm of one of the most vicious blockades in history. "La huelga", that's how the Spaniards call it, ground the country to a halt. It brought empty supermarket shelves, mile-long motorway queues and - above all- one dead, dozens injured and hundreds of damaged lorries and trucks. A group of lorries that were not on the picket line were set alight, leaving the driver with 25% of his body severely burnt.
How is that right-wing? The right to strike is sacrosanct, and it goes without saying that if hauliers have resorted to such extreme measures, they must feel pretty desperate indeed. But there are two aspects that should make us feel instinctively unsympathetic to their cause.
One, the way they went about it. The notion that "if I can't eat, then nor will you be able to" is simply vile. You cannot stop a nation from functioning. By all means, go on strike, make your employers feel the pressure, but you shouldn’t directly and intently punish innocent people, let alone the whole country. The Spanish blockade was incredibly aggressive. Those who didn't stop straightaway at picket lines were attacked, their load chucked out and their tyres slashed. The entire nation was literally brought to a standstill. With roads jammed up, hospitals or old people's homes started running out of supplies. Bear in mind lorry drivers are not the only ones who are feeling the pinch with prices -fuel in particular- going up. And until the situation goes back to normal, the short term effect is more expensive grocery items. The hauliers' action affected the most vulnerable people twice over. Can you imagine if each and every category struggling to make ends meet started doing that? [...read the rest of the article on Hagley Road to Ladywood, the Birmingham media & society website]
Claude,
Big Jewry likes using labels, sorta like Nepos Fuckbertas here at WUFYS, like "racist," "right-wing," "Nazi," "fascist" (which actually derives directly from the Roman word fasces, which is a bundle of tightly bound sticks used by the Roman military and later designed into architectural columns), "hater," "evil," "warmonger," "hate-monger," "anti-Semite," etc. All of these terms were coined by Jews or their useful idiots and all are used solely to neutralize or paralyze opposition; in other words, to quell resonable discussion and debate.
Reminds me of CoZwhacker, Nepos LickmyAssbertas, Robotitties, Shooting Tittyballs, Infinite asshole, and Grimmace the bong-hitter. They just love to quell discussion and debate. As soon as you even suggest disagreement with their dogmatic views they attack like the Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine. Don't cross these little shyts Claude. Just agree with everything they say and you'll do fine here at WUFYS.
Thanks for the input dude, and try to ignore the dumb comments.
I'm not quite sure I get the comment from E. Olmert...
Actually, you, with your lack of any cogent argument and your almost complete reliance on a potty-mouthed insults to get your 'point' across, are far closer to the behaviour of Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine.
great post - nevermind EOWN, she's got issues.
Perhaps you're right. Probably, they should have arranged for ways to serve the people who would be hurt most by such a strike.
On the other hand, there is no better way to drive the point home, then to withhold your services and make people taste the value of what you do.
Often people must suffer before they realize how indispensable others are in their lives. Sometimes it teaches them not to take others for granted. Other times it just pits one set of workers against the other - each certain that their needs and convenience is more important than the others'.
Whose happiness, after all, is more important?
I think it's high time selfishness be given the credit it deserves for being the single most destructive force known to man - second only to arrogance, greed and lies.
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"Money" has no value - people do.