Socialist Party members have been back on picket lines giving support to striking bus drivers in North and East London. Below is the text of the second strike bulletin.

Arriva on the back foot

Shut London down

After just two days of strike action at eight bus garages, bus drivers and their union Unite forced management at Arriva London North to the table. Their first offer was rejected by drivers last Friday. The impressive strike, backed up by big picket lines, shows that drivers are determined to get an agreement that really protects them in the cab, and bus workers know they have the industrial power to win what they need.

The strike has already got important coverage in the news and huge public support. People don’t want their drivers struggling in extreme heat. Drivers from other companies will also be watching the strike and wondering if the mood in their garages is strong enough to win a ballot. Clapton and Dartford garages are now reballoting, having only narrowly missed the 50% turnout threshold – which still hasn’t been removed despite being one of Labour’s election pledges back in 2024.

The quickest way to win drivers’ demands will be to spread the strike. Sharon Graham, the newly re-elected general secretary of Unite, is backing the strike and is fighting for a resolution. This is great – and one concrete way she could help the strikes is by helping them spread across the city. Unite bus drivers brought London to a standstill in 2012 and 2015. Both times they won important concessions. The best way to get a resolution to the issue of overheated cabs is by all-London action.

Sharon Graham should organise a combine of Unite bus reps from all the different garages to discuss how we can make sure every garage is part of the action.

The privatisation of London buses in the 1990s saw the break-up of the network and decades of problems for bus drivers, who have ended up fighting company by company to defend terms and conditions.

Zoë Garbett, newly-elected Green Party Hackney Council Mayor visited Stamford Hill picket line to give support. This would be welcomed but the Greens, who now lead both Hackney and Haringey councils, which cover a big proportion of Arriva London North bus garages, should use that political position to push the drivers demands.

The Greens won five councils across London in the May elections, covering 1.5 million people. This was because they were seen as a left alternative to Starmer’s Labour government and the cutting Labour councils. Now they have to use that powerful base to fight austerity and put pressure on new Labour prime minister Andy Burnham and his London mayor Sadiq Khan to accept the bus drivers’ demands.

The Greens should demand a meeting with Khan and an emergency debate in the London Assembly, calling for the agreement that the union and drivers are fighting for. But they should go much further – demanding that Arriva London North and all the private bus operators are thrown out of the London bus network and the whole service is nationalised.

Burnham has just been forced to take control of bus services in the West Midlands because the private operator National Express wants out. But they are following the failed franchising model that has operated in London for over three decades, and that Burnham presided over in Manchester when he was regional mayor. Bus drivers know that this means unsafe buses and bus workers on different contracts, with different pay and conditions. That’s why we need to fight to put drivers’ safety, jobs and income before bus operators’ profits!

That means fighting for a political voice for the workers’ movement. Socialist Party members and allies moved an emergency motion at last year’s Unite Policy Conference to support the Birmingham bin workers who have been striking against fire and rehire by the then Labour council, backed by Starmer. That motion also opened up a debate within the union about its relationship with Labour.

Socialist Party members on the newly elected left Unite Executive Committee are campaigning for the 2027 rules conference to be brought forward to resolve this issue. It is also why the Socialist Party is part of campaigns across the trade union movement for steps to build an independent political voice for the working class, including calling for a cross-union conference on political representation.

Talks, motions, taskforces and summits between the union and workers, and the bosses and politicians have all been tried and failed. Only the organised, collective strength of the picket line has ever moved the employers, Greater London Authority or government.

In September the leaderships of all the major trade unions, including Unite, will be meeting at TUC congress in Brighton. They will debate a motion calling on the trade union movement to set the date for a mass anti-austerity demonstration against the government. The last time they did this in 2011, 750,000 trade unionists marched through London. It led directly to two million workers striking together later that year. We need that again. It is why the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is organising a lobby of the TUC congress to try and get the motion for a demonstration passed (see box for details on how to come along).  

London bus drivers keep the streets moving. As a result, the bosses in London make millions in profits every day. Yet at the same time, the bus companies refuse to make the changes that Unite bus drivers are asking for. Enough is enough. It’s time to build on the amazing momentum that has been started by drivers in north London. Spread the strikes and build the fightback!

What needs to happen now

  • Coordinate the fight across every operator and every garage, no more picking us off one company at a time
  • Win the Fight Fatigue Now demands in full: fatigue management, guaranteed 12-hour breaks, decent welfare facilities, and real air conditioning fleet-wide
  • Mass turnout on every ballot paper, in every garage, to beat the thresholds the Tories built and Labour hasn’t scrapped
  • Build solidarity and hardship funds now, so a long fight doesn’t become a war of attrition we lose to exhaustion
  • Put full demands on Khan and on Burnham’s government
  • Build elected, accountable strike committees in every garage, keeping the dispute in members’ hands
  • Push Unite to help build a real political voice for our class, one that fights for public ownership and workers’ control, not one that waits on Labour
  • Fight for London’s buses in full public ownership, under the democratic control and management of the workers, passengers and communities