Eleanor Donne, Essex Socialist Party
The Burston School Strike rally, in Norfolk, is an annual trade union and workers’ movement event commemorating ‘the longest strike in history’.
Trade union councils sent coaches from Peterborough, Coventry, Ipswich, Southend and Norwich, with 300 attending in total. This is a lot smaller than the peak years, when Jeremey Corbyn was Labour Party leader. Then, 3,000 were there. And it was smaller than last year, when transport union RMT general secretary Mick Lynch addressed the rally near the start of the strike wave.
Platform speakers included a representative from the doctors’ union BMA, who vowed that their action will continue. The Labour Party stall played it safe on the other hand, with no politics – just cakes and a tombola!
Dave Nellist – Socialist Party member and chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) – raised the urgent need for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to fight the ‘minimum service level’ laws that are a threat to the whole of the union movement.
He encouraged everyone to attend the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) lobby of the TUC which took place on Sunday 10 September in Liverpool.
