Peoples Republic of South Devon

Strike

July 19th, 2008

posted by Jess Sains

This week seen many services in Devon come to a stand still. Some teaching assistants, social workers, hospital porters, airport workers, refuse collectors and other council workers went out on strike over the below inflation pay-rise facing some of the less well paid. Today, a number of coast guard stations will remain un(wo)manned as they too go on strike for 48 hours.

As usual with strikes it is time for the moaning to begin. And it is not only the Daily Mail readers of this country who come on out of their own contented little bit of wood work and harp on about the unfairness of it all – its almost everyone. “We all have to tighten the purse strings at the moment – not just those in the public sector”, “we don’t get a pay-rise!”, “they just want something for nothing!”, “they have jobs for life and they’re taking the michael out of the rest of us!” and so on and so forth…

Whatever happened to being united? Did we lose it somewhere in the winter of discontent, when we realised that going on strike meant actually putting some people out for a whole? Surely the point of a strike is that is disrupts, that the service those striking provide is missed, is important. You take for granted that someone will take your rubbish, will teach your children, will do the nasty work at the hospitals, will handle your bags as you swan off on a jolly, will do all the things that get done without you noticing most of the time. Then, when the jobs stop getting done, when people are not there, we get affronted. We all have to work so why shouldn’t you? You’re paid to pick up my crap, paid to teach my brats so you should put-up and shut-up.

So here we are, in the post-Thatcher era when we all know strikers can be smashed, when we all live on a completely individual basis, looking after number one. Number one. Just number one, no one else. The collective, collective action frightens us now, Thatcher’s babies. We all work hard, we all pay our way, we all own, we all buy, we all do the little dance of the bleak Monday morning and the happy beer addled Friday nights, and we do it on our own.

The collective is trouble. Strikes are trouble. We just want continuation and someone we never pay any attention to doing something worse than we have to.

More articles by Jess Sains
On Love and Hypocrisy (or The Confessions of a Rubbish Anarchist)
The Smaller Things of Politics
The Circle of Strife
Green Goblins
Terrorised
Ironing Out the Kinks

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