Strike rally and march

I estimated seven or eight hundred people at the strike rally yesterday; the Cambridge News put the number at one thousand. I set off back to work as the march began at 12.45. Half an hour later I watched from a window as it passed my library, behind the graduation celebrations on Senate House lawn.

30 June strikes

Some good speeches at the public meeting in the Guildhall last night, called to build support for the joint strikes on 30 June. There was a speaker from each union involved: ATL, NUT (school teachers), PCS (civil servants), and UCU (university and college staff: members in post-'92 universities will strike).

The government's line on pensions is that public sector workers need to retire later, pay more, and get less because 'we're living longer'. What—since 2006? All the speakers last night reminded us that we sorted this one out, in reforms in 2006 (for teachers) and 2007 (civil servants). The myth of the gold-plated pension was also hounded through the evening.

The ATL and NUT speakers, Martin Johnson and Kevin Courtney, complained about the government's negotiating incompetence (on public display last week, with Danny Alexander's clumsy intervention). Kevin, Jill Eastland from UCU, and Mike Black from PCS, were all keen—as I am—to put the pensions raid in the context of the wider attack on workers and public services. ATL's position is different, with its concerns narrower.

Platform and floor, we all deplored the government and rightwing media's attempt to set private and public sector workers against each other; most memorably an NUJ member, whose union had to fight to defend journalists' pensions last year.

I'll be sure to join the lunchtime strike rally on Parker's Piece on 30 June.