WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE UNITED KINGDOM - news journal UPDATE - (en) UK, ACG: John Prescott- strike-breaker and enabler of Blair (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 John Prescott, who died on 21st November, went from being a working

class activist among seafarers to being a useful cover for Tony Blair in
his attacks on workers. ---- Prescott went straight from school at 15 to
train as a porter and chef. Two years later he joined the  Merchant Navy
to escape military service. He worked as a steward on Cunard liners.
---- He led a strike on the Mauretania, after ship's officers refused to
allow other ranks being allowed to wear whites in the tropics. His
militant behaviour meant that he got fewer postings. The National Union
of Seamen, of which he was a member, sponsored him to go to Ruskin
College. The right-wing leadership probably thought that this was a good
way of getting rid of him.

He then went on to do a degree course at Hull University. He was able to
support seafarers as a student during the 1966 seafarers strike, which
took place under the Labour government of Harold Wilson. This strike
lasted for a month and a half. Wilson referred to the strike being led
by a " tightly knit group of politically motivated men," and threatened
to use the Royal Navy and RAF to smash the strike. The Wilson government
set up the Pearson inquiry into the strike.

In response Prescott and Charlie Hodgins published the pamphlet Not
Wanted on Voyage: The Seamen's Reply, put out by the Hull Dispute
Committee. As Prescottt noted, "The job of the Inquiry was to discredit
the seamen's case, and to deliver up the sailor for sacrifice on the
altar of George Brown's Incomes Policy...The goodwill of the bankers,
the ill-will of the working class. How familiar a story that is of
Labour Governments, when we cast our minds back to Ramsay MacDonald and
the 1929-31 government. It was the trade unions then who stiffened the
Labour Party against the attacks on unemployment pay. They must rally to
the cause in the different circumstances of today."

Prescott was elected as a Labour MP for Hull East  in the 1970 election.
At first, he was on the Labour left. He showed an increasing desire to
use his  working class background to enrich himself, however, and
evolved his positions to the right.

In the 1990s he sided with Blair, to whom he was very useful. Prescott
became the "working class" enabler of increasingly neoliberal policies.
He managed to get through the abolition of Clause IV on a second vote in
1994. This clause was a Labour Party commitment to the public ownership
of key industries.

With the 1997 election, Prescott became deputy prime minister. He
supported the encroaching privatisation of Royal Mail, and the complete
privatisation of Air Traffic Control. He backed the introduction of
tuition fees for university students in September 1998, when he himself
had been able to go to Ruskin and Hull University with grants.

In 2001 he fully backed British support for the American invasion of
Iraq. The following year, he adopted an aggressive stance against the
firefighters' strike. He told the firefighters, "Take the gun away from
the head that there's going to be a strike, because that's not the way
to negotiate."  He blocked the original 16% pay offer, saying it was
"excessive" that the strikes were "unnecessary" and that the Fire
Brigades Union should halt them immediately.

Resigning from the Commons in 2007 with the defeat of Blair, Prescott
subsequently became Baron Prescott in the House of Lords.  Two years
before he had denounced the "flunkery and titles" of the House of Lords
in an interview. He now fully devoted himself to increasing his wealth.

Every part of the parliamentary racket, from David Cameron to Blair,
Starmer and Alistair Campbell, mourned Prescott's death, with Jeremy
Corbyn chiming in to say "I am really sad to hear that John Prescott has
passed away. John was a huge figure and personality, from his seafaring
union days to the highest offices in Government."

A salutary lesson that Parliament and the Labour Party are the enemies
of working class emancipation. Prescott was not a "working class hero"
but, as one of his old seafarer ex-friends told him, "a fucking sellout."

Photo: Creative Commoms Licence, Photo/Sedrak Mkrtchyan

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/11/23/john-prescott-strike-breaker-and-enabler-of-blair/
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