A disgusting spectacle in Liverpool

This year’s TUC annual conference summed up all that is rotten in the British labour movement. The bureaucrats, left-wing posers and the rest of the gravy-trainers were all there in Liverpool to pass the usual platitudes that pass for working class solidarity these days.
Sir Keir Starmer joined the assembled general secretaries for a back-slapping eve of conference dinner but left it to his deputy Angela Rayner to assure the union bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie as a whole that they can sleep soundly in their beds when Starmer gets to Downing Street.
The most sickening episode was when delegates voted overwhelmingly for a motion backing the provision of “moral and material aid”, including arms, to the puppet regime in Ukraine.
Moving the motion, Barbara Plant, the president of the GMB, said Ukraine was fighting for its survival in the face of a brutal Russian onslaught and claimed that denying the Ukrainians of the means of self-defence would be like the arms embargo that crippled the Spanish republic in the 1930s.
Seconding the motion, Aslef Assistant General Secretary Simon Weller claimed Ukrainian unions were not subject to bans, while Russia’s recent declaration that the International Transport Federation was an “undesirable organisation” would put the rights of many workers, particularly seafarers, at risk. And needless to say, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak got up to tell conference that the General Council backed the motion.
Though a handful of unions including the RMT, UCU and the NEU abstained only the firefighters’ and the small bakers’ union took the principled stand to oppose the motion. Jamie Newell of the Fire Brigades Union, condemned the way debate on Ukraine has been shut down in Britain. “We do not think the escalation of war is in the interests of the Russian or Ukrainian working class,” he said.
The “Solidarity with Ukraine” motion committed the TUC to supporting “Ukrainian unions’ calls for financial and practical aid from the UK to Ukraine”, and “the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territories occupied since 2014”— including Crimea and the eastern Donbas regions – exactly the  same demands of Anglo-American imperialism and the rest of the NATO pack.

Support the doctors!

Junior doctors joined consultants in industrial action called by the British Medical Association (BMA) this week. For the first time in the history of the NHS  consultants and junior doctors stood together in joint strike action for the first time. Ss with previous strikes the union ensured that patients are kept safe by ensuring that emergency services remain in place. 
Junior doctors account for nearly half NHS doctors - from medics fresh out of university to those sometimes with 10 years' experience. Their pay has been cut by more than 26 per cent in real-terms cuts since 2008/09. This mean newly-qualified medics earn just £14.09 an hour. This is in comparison to baristas at Pret a Manger, who can earn up to £14.10 an hour, after the coffee chain recently announced it has raised wages by 19 per cent this year. Consultants too have seen their real-term take-home pay fall by over a third over the last 14 years. his can’t going. Support the striking doctors! Defend the NHS!