Marxist. Trade Unionist. Socialist-feminist. Author. Poet. Speaker. Tutor. RMT ex-Exec. Workers' Liberty. Autie. Bi. PUFC fan.
These are the opening speeches from this event, held on Zoom on Tuesday 22 March 2022.
Sarah Woolley (General Secretary, Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers’ Union): Welcome to the joint RMT and Free Our Unions TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference fringe meeting.
Asylum wants your poetry for our radical mental health magazine.
Janine will tell the story of one of Holloway prison's former residents at this event to mark the seventh anniversary of the prison's closure and promote proposals for a progressive Women's Building in its place.
Venue: entrance to HMP Holloway, Parkhurst Road, London N7 0NU.
To save the rivers
To pay for their survival
We must burst the banks
Give handouts to the City not the town
Award the top the most, the bottom least
and in the end, the wealth will trickle down
So feed the finest to the howling hound
The sparrow pecks the droppings of the beast
Give handouts to the City not the town
Allow some crumbs to tumble to the ground
Please overload the table for the feast
and in the end, the wealth will trickle down
Autumn falls and storm clouds brew
The post each day brings season's chill
The queue moves on a step or two
The last demand is overdue
It stands unopened on the sill
As autumn falls and storm clouds brew
They stand in file to give their due
A strung-out wait to pay their bill
The queue moves on a step or two
A fortnight back, complaining about
having to wait behind two others
to use the cashpoint
Now, happy to stand all day and night
to file past a box
with a crown and a cushion on top
and inside, the body of
someone you never knew -
it's the nearest you could ever get to her
It's the ultimate display of Britishness:
an awesome combo of
queueing and deference
Companies have suspended polluting the air
Governments have suspended cutting our care
Energy firms have suspended price rises
Landlords have suspended nasty surprises
Employers have suspended exploiting our labours
Lobbyists have suspended cashing in favours
Bosses have suspended giving the sack
Oh, they haven't? So, why have we suspended fighting back?
Walk down locked and empty streets alone,
arrive for start of shift, it's bear-the-brunt time
to serve some others' families not your own
Going from the home front to the frontline
Frozen pay, now tiny, ice-cold 'offers',
red-bordered bills alert approaching deadline
The firing line ignites key workers' coffers
Going from the frontline to the breadline
We've put our products' prices up,
that's what we chose to do
The power firms are doing it,
so we can do it too
We're going to charge a fair chunk more
to everyone who buys
If they won't pay our higher rates,
we'll cut off our supplies
We need the extra income for
the bigger bills we get
And that's how we will justify
the tariffs that we set