This
September marks the 80 anniversary of the Invergordon Mutiny, an
event that caused a run on the pound, a panic on the London Stock
Exchange and Britain to leave the gold standard. Then, as now, it was
a conservative government that was implementing pay cuts on public
sector workers, which also applied to naval ratings. Most of the
ordinary seamen were to see they pay cut by 10% and in some cases by
25%. The North Atlantic Fleet had put into Invergordon and the
sailors learnt of the pay cuts from the newspapers. Meetings were
held on shore and the Red Flag was sung by groups of sailors. They
had decided to refuse orders except essential duties and on some
ships, refused to put to sea. The strike action was spreading
throughout the whole North Atlantic Fleet and messages were flowing
from the Rear-Admiral Tomkinson, who was in charge of the fleet, the
Admiralty and Downing Street. Eventually the Fleet set sail for its
home base and some concessions were agreed on the ratings grievances.
However, Rear Admiral Tomkinson was held responsible for the problem
escalating, claiming he didn't take severe enough action at the start
of the strike. Several of the organisers of the mutiny were jailed,
200 sailors from the North Atlantic Fleet were discharged from the
service and a further 200 from elsewhere in the navy were discharged
for attempting to incite similar actions across the service. One of
the organisers, Len Wilcot accepted an invitation to go to the USSR,
while another, Fred Copeman, commanded a British battalion of the
International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
That was 1931 and here we are in 2011 and we have a conservative
government trying to implement savage cuts to pay and conditions of
public sector workers. It seems we the ordinary people never learn,
we tolerate a system that every so often takes away everything it can
from what the people have fought for, and won. Under this capitalist
system what we the ordinary people have is never ours, it is
grudgingly surrendered to usafter many a difficult strugle, and then at the first opportunity the
parasites try to take it all back. I'm sure we have the imagination to
come up with a better and more just system that sees to the needs of
all our people, a system built on co-operation, mutual aid and
sustainability, free from the greed drive motive of profit for the
few. Time to get the parasites off our backs.
