Jack’s last Straw
Dear Jack Straw,
I don’t think you quite understand what you are dealing with here. After Jacqui Smith lit the touchpaper at the command of Uncle Gordon with regard to police officers’ pay, it is astonishing to think that you are planning to resolve the crisis by banning prison officers from striking.
To arrogantly announce that “we will have no alternative but to seek this reserve power” to prevent prison officers from striking is a curious statement. I can think of a few alternatives myself – you could give them a perfectly reasonable payrise, or listen to their concerns and work with them to solve the problem. Neither of them sound grossly unacceptable or particularly bold, yet they do not seem to have crossed your mind.
Do not push the prison officers to the limit. This is the last straw for them, and you may well end up being the last Straw they have to deal with if this ends badly.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
(I think you are referring to ‘prison’ officers, rather than ‘police’ officers in your piece – certainly when you quote Jack Straw?)
Nonetheless, it does seem extraordinary, because as The Times piece goes on to say, “[Straw] said that he had been left with no alternative but to seek to introduce a legislative ban on industrial action by prison officers – just two years years after Labour repealed an earlier ban.”
Quite a u-turn.
If the government is to negotiate three year pay deals with the public sector which Brown also announced today, I cannot see this being particularly fruitful if at the same time Straw is alienating union leaders by moving to ban striking. No one wants the same problems we saw recently when a prison officers did just this.
But neither do we want a return to the 50’s, 60’s or 70’s when sucesssive Tory and Labour leaders were (Macmillan, through Heath etc) were left impotent at the hands of powerful unions and their poopulist leaders. We are not in the same position now. Union membership is inevitably not as strong as those days, so to take quite such a divisive move would is either major posturing – or if seen thorugh – would lead to wildcat stikes and be utterly counterproductive?
Olly Kendall
Sorry, good spot, I meant prison officers and have changed accordingly! (my mind wasn’t quite working this morning, evidently).
The relationship between Labour and the unions is something that many long-term supporters of the party must be concerned about. Labour have always prided themselves on having excellent relationships with the unions and securing large amounts of funding as a result – is this the beginning of the end for these historic bonds, I wonder?…
Today’s Hain debacle about the transparency of party funding has certainly re-ignited that debate. But whether Brown can do what Sir Hayden cannot remains to be seen. In fact it’s both Labour and the Tories whose positions are equally immovable with each defending the large union donations (with no options for union members to give thier political support to other parties) and Ascroft’s large donations respectively.
The Lib Dems have their own problems with suggestions of a link between the nomination of a x-bench peer and donations, though they support the use of taxpayers money to part fund the parties – a solution around which has to be the only way forard.
From Today’s epolitix: “As the debate on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill gets underway in the Commons, 481 members backed an amendment to outlaw officers from striking.
Some 46 MPs voted against the measure, giving the government a majority of 435.”
As it turns out this has to be one of the Government’s biggest majorities. Perhaps the Gov should start questioning the changes it has imposed on the criminal justice system which has seen thousands more laws on the statute book, people incarcerated who would be better served by community sentences and prison officers dramatically over-worked and stressed to the max. Jack Straw who lead the government today in passing this law, has himself been the architect of a system that buckled under the pressure of an increasingly criminalised society.
I don’t believe we should be building more prisons but if we do (and plans are afoot) we need to make damn sure that we are able to support financially (and emotionally) the existing and new prison officers in the UK who do an extremely tough and often thankless job.
Exactly. Like all those MPs I would never want the prison officers to strike but it must be a very difficult and onerous job that places a lot of strain on everyone involved, which is why I would like to think that they deserve a pay rise at least in line with inflation. My attitude is that we should never have arrived at this situation in the first place.
Seems to me that the government have got its priorities in a muddle.
Problem: Running out of prison places.
Solution: Release offenders early and tell judges not to give custodial sentences, whilst insisting there has been no moving of goal posts.
Problem: Dramatic increase in violent crime.
Solution: Deny it exists by falling back on crime survey statistics.
Problem: Reduced police efficiency.
Solution: Replace them with community support officers, give officers a pay cut (RPI=4.3%, pay rise=1.9%) and saddle them with paper work.
Problem: Dire reoffending rates from those released from prison
Solution: Bully prison staff into accepting a pay cut (remember, RPI=4.3%) and continue to bury head in the sand about overcrowding.
I am a Conservative. There are two things that deserve decent government funding. Protection of our society is one of them (Army, Law & Order) and those things that bring economic benefit are others (Transport, Education).