Friday, January 27, 2006

You can't get me

:

Sailors and Coal miners both work in extraordinarilly dangerous situations, where discipline and co-operation are essential. Railway engineers must obey safety instructions immediately. Chemical workers must do as they are instructed.

They can all join trade unions.

Apparently, soldiers cannot.

Now, while the idea of soldiers' movements has a certain dangerous history (after all, it was political soldiers in Spain who started the revolt that lead to fascism), it is certainly unarguable that workers in uniform deserve the same democracy and rights as the rest of us - indeed, they need to be as fully integrated with the community at large as popssible - citizens armies - in order to prevent them becoming too much of a danger.

For all its risk (after all, they are calling for a Federation in order to protect themselves from charges of abuse - the Police Federation has a long history of defending the dodgier side of policing) it would represent a break with militarism, and diminish the élite control of the army.

Update

It seems, not only the army wants to be Union Free

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