MUST READ -Now we see what was really at stake in the miners' strike

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/12/miners-strike-gutting-unions-bob-crow
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As a rule, the most effective trade unionists have to die before the mainstream media and politicians will say anything decent about them. That's certainly what has happened to the rail and seafarers' leader Bob Crow.

Instead of the industrial dinosaur, political throwback and strike-happy hypocrite demonised for more than a decade, it now turns out that Crow was in fact a modern and effective workplace champion. The scourge of the London commuter didn't just drive up rail workers' living standards, we are told, but fought successfully for low-paid contract cleaners into the bargain.

But the 1984-5 strike, the decisive social and economic confrontation of Britain's postwar era, is how we got where we are today. A generation on, it is now even clearer than it was at the time why the year-long struggle over the country's energy supply took place, and what interests were really at stake.

The Thatcher government's war on the miners – her chancellor Nigel Lawson described preparations for the strike as "like re-arming to face the threat of Hitler" – wasn't just about class revenge for the Tories' humiliating defeats at the hands of the miners in the early 1970s. It was about using the battering ram of state power to break the single greatest obstacle to the transformation of the economy in the interests of corporate privilege and wealth that Margaret Thatcher was determined to carry out. The offensive ushered in the full-blown neoliberal model that has failed to deliver for the majority, generated inequality and insecurity on a huge scale, and imploded with such disastrous consequences five-and-a-half years ago.

For the miners, the strike was a defensive battle for jobs and communities. But it also raised the alternative of a different kind of Britain, rooted in solidarity and collective action. The crippling of the country's most powerful union opened the way for the systematic deregulation of the labour market – and the zero-hours contracts, falling real wages, payday loans and food banks we are living with today.
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Rest in peace Bob Crow - you were right and we knew it!! Fuck Thatcher, Reagan and all the neo-liberals.