A Strike on an Olympian Proportion

Yesterday in an interview with ‘The Guardian’ Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite, discussed the possibility of Strike action during the London Olympics. (Original Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/28/olympics-london-union-strike-threat) Today I discussed with a fellow student the possibility of strike action. He argued that strikes during the Olympics would make the UK look stupid and that the government should introduce laws to stop strike action during the Olympics. This reactionary view is probably one the government will follow if strike action becomes a reality, but at the moment these are hypothetical strikes, yet they raise two important questions; will the Olympics make the UK look like a glittering beacon of western civilisation? and Does the government have the right to limit civil liberties so that it is not embarrassed?

I remember in Year Five coming back from lunch to be told by my teacher that London had won the 2012 Olympic Games. I did not care then, and I don’t now. As the years went on more and more money was pulled from normally government funded areas to fund the Olympic Games. I am not a sporty person but am fond of the arts, so as I grew up I found more and more arts based ventures closing in order to fund one sporting event. The 2008 economic crisis only made billions of pounds spent on the Olympic Games more outrageous; Gordon Brown only seemed to use taxpayer’s money to bail out the banks and fund the Olympics. When the Games take place in the summer I do not believe they will show off the culture of Britain but rather how out of touch the UK governments have been with the public in the last decade. London may come off as a centre of sport and culture but, contrary to what many MP’S believe, London is not the entirety of the UK.

As a left-winger I love a good strike. Nothing hits harder than ‘downing tools’ and refusing to work. However I am not ignorant to the negative effects strikes have on the striker; the loss of pay being the major one. However I think striking during the Olympics would show the world that the UK economy, and the government, is not working. Strike action would break the charade of an economy in recovery and show the world our ruined economy, ravaged by bail outs and budget cuts. The government may seek to limit any humiliation by forcing laws through to stop any strike action. This would be unacceptable. The government never has the right to limit our rights; if people want to strike, they have the right to strike. If the government was allowed to stop any strikes it would be allowed to go down a slippery slope of limiting civil liberties. The government is meant to be the voice of the people, not the enemy of the people. If unions want to strike, they will strike and I for one hope they do.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

When going to a polling booth in the UK, voters are always faced with three choice. No matter what other parties appear on the ballot (be it growing ones such as The Green Party or regional parties such as SNP) Labour,  The Liberal Democrats and The Conservative Party always appear. However the lines that separate these three parties are blurred. In the last two decades these parties have grown closer and closer, creating a political system in which the three main parties are all close to centre. What happened to the good old days of a left wing Labour party, instead of one that threw out Clause 4 and gives up on nationalisation? Centre politics sets up a system where politicians appear to care more about staying in power by not appearing to take a strong opinion, and sacrifices politician's who fight for what they believe in. The longer the main three political party stay with this system, the more the general public feels disinterested in politics. The United Kingdom is leaving "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and instead turning into a government that never seems to change, despite of public opinion.

So how do you change a centrist system based on its own self preservation? Well, at the moment, it seems to be doing a good job of destroying itself. The 2010 election results were not, as The Conservatives claim, showing a public who no longer trusted the Labour party, they were the result of a public who feel they can no longer distinguish between the political parties. Current opinion polls show the Liberal Democrats have lost most of their public support (this is what happens when you are the scapegoat of the coalition) and The Conservatives and Labour stick around the 40% mark. In a time when one party is horrifically cutting public spending you would expect the public would support the rival party. However because the other party, this time being Labour, appears to offer the same thing as the party it is the rival of, choosing a political party has whittled down to which colour you prefer. If the three main parties stay on the centrist route, they will either have a public who feels that nothing ever changes so why bother voting or face some good old 1848 style political revolutions and uprisings.

However hope is not lost. All it would take is for one political party to stick its head up out of the sand and walk into no-man’s land shouting " Actually I feel pretty strongly that....", and not just on one policy but many policies. I am not saying that compromise is a bad thing but don't jump the gun and not even bother having a stronger view on something. If one party started to have strong views it would force the others to have strong views to counter the opposition’s views. Which party would stick their head out, if any, remains to be seen but I sincerely believe we are in the end days of centre politics. Hopefully its death will come sooner rather than later.