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New Labour declares war on FBU

New Labour's threats to use the army to break picket lines and seize fire engines from striking FBU members show that the Blair government will go to any lengths to fight the union's pay claim. This could even involve the use of the Tory anti-union laws to ban the strike altogether.

As John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, told MPs: . "Whatever I have to do, I will do it - be clear about it." That does not, of course, include paying more than the 4% offered by the employers on the orders of the government. New Labour would rather foot the £6 million-a-day bill for providing alternative cover.

These moves confirm that the real intention of the government is to break the FBU as a fighting force. Blair wants other unions to understand that New Labour will push ahead with its public services privatisation programme and tolerate no opposition.

While Prescott was speaking, the government announced the details of the "Foundation" hospitals which will be created outside NHS control. Even the former health secretary Frank Dobson can see that this is part of the break-up of the health service.

The fire service is already subject to the "private finance initiative". In London, for example, the fire engines are not actually owned by the local authority. They are owned by a private sector company and leased back to fire brigades.

An FBU source is quoted as saying that the government was resorting to desperate measures. He said: "They seem intent on acting like tinpot dictators. They accuse us of being militants, but they are becoming head bangers."

This is a correct estimate. That is why it is totally unacceptable for other unions who say they support the FBU to stand back and await the outcome of the firefighters' struggle before deciding on their own anti-privatisation and pay campaigns.

Union leaders who have pledged verbal support to the FBU have to act now, not sit back and allow the FBU to take on the government, the state and the media by itself.

Members of the RMT have shown they are willing to act by refusing to take out Tube trains on the London Underground on safety grounds.

It is time for sympathetic union leaders to declare publicly that they will not stand by and allow the state to bludgeon the FBU into submission and that they will organise official strike action to defend the firefighters.

Some union leaders fear the courts would seize assets because sympathetic strike action is illegal under Tory/New Labour anti-union laws. Well, what is the point in having assets if they are not used for fighting on behalf of the membership? Assets can always be rebuilt whereas the outcome of confrontations like this one will have a lasting effect.

The FBU has to defeat this reactionary New Labour government to win. We repeat: they will need the support of the rest of the trade union and working class movement to do so.

Movement for a Socialist Future
November 15, 2002