Sparks march under media blackout

As thousands of students marched through London against education cuts, a protest organised by rank-and-file electricians and UNITE, also marched in London as part of their campaign against bosses’ attempts to force them onto worse contracts - tearing up their terms and conditions agreements and slashing pay by 35%.

Blocking roads across central London as they toured building sites chanting ‘one out, all out’ the Sparks’ protest received almost zero coverage from the national media, whose attention was focussed on the student protest hoping the investment would pay off with coverage of an explosion of violence (it didn’t).

At the 2,000-strong rally in south London, Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union announced that construction giant Balfour Beatty had been served notice that a ballot for strike action will be launched next Wednesday.

At the Balfour Beatty site in Blackfriars, electricians demonstrated what they thought of the new terms and conditions by setting fire to them, and announcing their determination to increase union membership across all construction sites. Electricians responsed to Unite plans for a march on Parliament for a lobby of MPs by shouting ‘we want to march with the students’. Hundreds then set off down Fleet Street to try and link up with the student march.

After forcing their way through a police line, hundreds were kettled, and the massive police presence managed to beat back students’ attempts to link up with the sparks.

Matt, a student from Salford said: we knew that the electricians were attempting to join up with our protest so loads of students tried to help them break out of the kettle but there were too many police – it’s ludicrous that our two protests weren’t allowed to unite, it’s our right to protest but next time we’ll be better prepared.

Nevertheless, this militant display of solidarity between workers and students can only end badly for the coalition, which has attempted to set ordinary people against students by deriding them as lazy and self-interested. Today the electricians proved that they see right through this empty government propaganda.

We’re all in it together it’s true – but it’s workers and students who are united together in our struggle against the ruling class’s attempts to make us pay for their crisis.

REVOLUTION has consistently supported the sparks’ campaign by holding solidarity meetings across the country, and we call on young people to support them on November 30th when the rank and file are organising to come alongside the public sector workers and on the 7 December, the day of a planned strike at Balfour Beatty.

Students and workers, unite and fight!

• No to the new agreements – fight to maintain current pay and conditions
• For apprentices to earn the national minimum wage of £6.08 per hour, or the agreed Trade Union rate for their industry
• We won’t pay for their crisis – oppose all cuts and attacks on pay