IPFS News Link • U.s. Government Moral Authority

Bernie Sanders at RMT rally in London: Hawking the myth of a trade union revival

09-06-2022 • Laura Tiernan - WSWS

Sanders visited the UK as a political emissary of Biden and the US ruling class seeking to bolster efforts to contain the class struggle on both sides of the Atlantic. Sanders' visit to the UK reveals the critical importance the American ruling class attributes to this task as it prosecutes war against Russia amid a global wave of class struggle. During his visit the US senator met RMT officials and Labour MPs who have joined forces to launch Enough is Enough, a campaign group fronted by RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch. In 1938, amid an insurrectionary strike movement in the US that encompassed mass sit-downs and factory occupations, Leon Trotsky observed, "In periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the trade unions aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless… In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers."