Last weekend's strike of BA's 12,000 cabin crews proved far more effective than BA's union-busting chief executive Willie Walsh expected.
Despite BA boasting of having signed up and trained more than a thousand scabs, only half of the flights it had planned actually left the tarmac and many of those had no passengers onboard. By Sunday morning, empty BA planes had to be flown to Cardiff and other airports to sit out the strike, as there was no parking space left at Heathrow.
So, no-one should fall for the media's devious propaganda: the first BA strike was a success and chances are that the 4-day strike planned for next weekend will be too - that is, if it is not called off at the last minute by the union leadership.
The only way forward
It was not for nothing that politicians made a unanimous stand against the strikers.
Of course, everyone expected the Tories to shed hypocritical tears over the fate of BA passengers - without having anything to say about the jobs and wages of BA cabin crews. But when Brown found himself egged on by Cameron to condemn the strikers, the media immediately relayed his "totally unacceptable, unjustified and deplorable" attack on the strike. As if BA's cost-cutting policy on workers' backs was acceptable and justifiable! Significantly, in the same breath, Brown made a point of showing that his sympathy went to the company - i.e. shareholders - first.
This will not surprise anyone, of course, coming from these parties which, over the past two years, have been falling over themselves to pour public funds into the coffers of the banks - and therefore, indirectly, the pockets of shareholders!
For the Browns and the Camerons of this world, the very idea that workers should stand up against being made to pay for the capitalists' greed is, in and of itself, anathema. At BA, they found a willing instrument for their policies, in the person of Willie Walsh - a man whose union-busting record goes back to the days when he turned the Irish Republic's airline, Aer Lingus, into a low-cost airline, by slashing workers' wages and cutting thousands of jobs.
The politicians and Walsh expected BA workers to be intimidated by their strong-arm tactics and media campaign. Workers found the courts against them. They were faced with Walsh's attempt at dividing their ranks by trying to recruit scabs. They were threatened with losing some of the rights attached to their jobs if they went on strike. But they stuck with it, determined to stop BA from cutting jobs and freezing wages.
And they are right! Fighting back is the only way for us, workers, to defend our interests against the bosses' greed!
Time for all of them to pay!
The BA strike got such a high profile because the government wanted to make an example of it, to drive in the idea that fighting back is pointless for workers. But the efforts they have put into intimidating the strikers also show how much the politicians and their big business masters fear a possible backlash from our ranks.
And this should come as a lesson for all of us. We produce all the wealth in this society and every penny that goes into the pockets of the parasitic capitalist class which owns everything. And for that reason, we have the collective strength not only to stop their attacks against jobs, wages and working conditions, but also to regain the ground we have lost over the past years. It is this collective strength of the working class that the capitalists and their politicians fear most.
Especially as, after all, they cannot conceal the reality - that the present "hard times" are hard only for the working class, while the very rich manage to make rich pickings out of the crisis. See the billions of pounds that speculators are making today on the stock markets or by betting on the future bankruptcy of states such as Greece or Spain, and even Britain for that matter! Not only are these parasites cashing in on the crisis, but they threaten to make it even worse for entire populations!
And who are these speculators? In the main, they are the very same banks which were bailed out with public money or subsidiaries of these banks. And they are merely acting as middle-men for the very same big shareholders whose dividends the bosses want to boost by cutting our jobs and conditions across the economy.
And yes, these parasites should be made to learn what the phrase "hard times" means. There is every reason for all workers to join ranks and stand up and use our collective strength to make these capitalists pay for the crisis they caused.