The Strikes Bill and Conservative Illiberalism

I had been meaning to write something of the Strikes Bill ever since the Conservatives first announced their latest attempt to remove the basic rights of those living in the UK. However, having left it so late, most of the criticisms have now been well-covered in both the mainstream and expert media.

It has been made clear that the proposals are probably a breach of basic international human rights agreements, of which the country is not only a member but which Conservative MPs originally wrote to describe fundamental British constitutional principles. The legislation itself has been shown to be riddled with gaps and essentially hands a blank cheque to ministers to decide whether or not a strike will ever be permitted or to sack large numbers of vital nurses, teachers and firefighters. It ignores the fact that the UK already has some of the toughest, most anti-democratic, restrictions on industrial action of any Western democracy and does nothing to address the genuine problems in British public services and infrastructure which have triggered the strikes, problems which ultimately harm all of us living in the UK.

At first I thought that the proposals might be a ‘Dead Cat‘, intended to shift the political argument away from the many ways in which the Conservative Party is failing the country right now and instead make it look as though the unions and the Labour Party want to put the public at risk by refusing minimum service levels (something which literally never happens, there are already mechanisms in place to ensure life-and-death cases are dealt with, I’ve seen this first-hand).

Maybe that’s part of it, but the reality is that this isn’t an exception to the Conservatives’ behaviour since 2010, it very much continues the trend which started with David Cameron that if the Conservatives can’t get you on their side, then they will do their best to make sure you can’t do anything to oppose them.

The first step on this was the passage of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act under Cameron, which placed major restrictions on what charities, pressure groups and unions could say when it came to contradicting Government policy or highlighting their failures.

Then there was the Elections Act under Boris, a measure following those implemented by Republicans in the US which in the last week they have openly admitted were designed to suppress turnout. In an alleged attempt to tackle ‘personation’, a crime so rare and hard to actually effect the outcome of a town council by-election never mind a General Election that it has probably never changed any result ever in the UK, everyone is now required to present ID at polling stations. It doesn’t take a political genius to note that those without ID are overwhelmingly poor, young or ethnic minorities, and the exact people least likely to vote Conservative. Still sceptical? Why, other than for election rigging reasons, would the Government allow an Older Persons Oyster Card to be permitted for Voter ID, but not Oyster Cards for other over-18s.

Next we have Public Order Bill, still working its way through Parliament, but which seeks to drastically increase the powers of the State to prohibit and interfere in protest activity, and prosecute those involved.

And last, but not least, there’s the Strikes Bill. No doubt there are other measures I’ve missed, but I think the trend here is obvious for all to see: disagree with the Conservatives and they will pass a law to shut you up. Welcome to 21st Century Conservative Britain.

There is a major hypocrisy with all of this. An increasing number of Hard Right Conservative MPs like to portray themselves as libertarians or traditional liberals, defending freedom of speech against the ‘woke’ (a phrase which–as someone on the Left–I’ve only ever heard used by people on the Right, usually while being given air time on major national television shows to tell us all how they’ve been completely silenced by this sinister cabal) and the interference of the State.

Crawley’s MP, Henry Smith, is one such Conservative. When I challenged him to a public debate to explain why he had opposed an amendment to protect women from being harassed within a certain distance of an abortion clinic, his response was that it was a matter of protecting the right to freedom of speech. Yet, he had no problem with passing any of the other measures listed above. I’ll be frank, I don’t believe that was his actual objection to the amendment or that he would really stand on principle if it was, I believe that he is desperate to court anti-abortion voters for his next election campaign and this was the easiest way to do it, who cares what happens to the women involved. Much as when he voted against gay marriage in order to court another group of social conservatives.

I have never been a Conservative Party supporter, but you don’t have to look all that far back in political history to find a time when Conservative Party MPs did actually do things on principle and you don’t have to agree with those principles to accept that it is better for someone to legislate on the basis of what they believe to be ‘right’ rather than politically expedient.

The evidence of our eyes is that Conservative MPs today are different. They are no longer conservative, never mind traditional liberals or libertarians. They’re a collection of chancers concerned only with pocketing what they can, while they can and telling whatever lies they have to in order to get away with it. And they won’t stop, unless we put a stop to them.