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Labour warned of 'dangerous cocktail' as national bin strikes loom
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Apr 15, 2025
Shadow Defence Minister Mark Francois has declared it is "not the job of the Army" to tackle Birmingham's bin crisis - hitting out at the "hopelessly mismanaged" City Council.The city's overflowing bin crisis has become so severe that crews from neighbouring councils have been brought in to collect waste.FULL STORY HERE.
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0:00
Let's look at the context. On the one hand, you've got an absolutely hopelessly mismanaged, bankrupt Labour Council
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And on the other side of the dispute, you've got an increasingly militant trade union in Unite, which happens to sponsor Angela Rayner
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So we have a thing called the Armed Forces Covenant in this country, which means we should respect the military and their families
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and they should be at no disadvantage compared to the rest of the population
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because of their military service. It would be a travesty if we dragged soldiers away from their loved ones
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over the Easter holidays in order to man bin lorries because Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister
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can't sort out an industrial dispute being led by the union that sponsors her in the first place
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So it's not the army's job to get Labour out of trouble, basically
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No, it's not. We've used the military in the past. For instance, in 2014, we had a lot of flooding in the West Country
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We called in the Army and the Marines. They assisted with that. Over in Sierra Leone, we sent medics out to fight the Ebola virus
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We never lost a single person. I was personally in charge of that day today as the Armed Forces Minister
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I don't think any reasonable person would object to using the military for those sorts of tasks
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but using them to dig Labour out of a hole because they're in the middle of an embarrassing industrial dispute
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I think would be completely wrong and it would go down extremely badly with the troops and with their families
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That's not what those guys and girls signed up for. Yeah, I mean there's also the aspect to it
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which is that Angela Rayner appears to have been quite keen to say I calling in the army to tackle the Birmingham bin crisis and then when you look at the detail on this it seems to be three blokes who are not actually in Birmingham or got any plans
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to go to Birmingham who are trying to just deal with some logistical
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difficulties. So it's almost like she's saying, well, I'm calling in the army because she thinks
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that's what people want to hear. It's not actually true, is it? Well, we found
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out, as I said, in the flooding in 2014 when people turned up in
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green, as the saying is, You know, a lot of the residents there who'd been going through misery with the flooding were very reassured
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So but at the moment, it looks as if they've assigned three logistical experts to advise on how you might clear the rubbish
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But they've not ruled out using troops completely. As I just said, I think that would be a real mistake if they did that
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But look, it's getting worse because Unite, as I understand it today, turned down the latest pay off
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They did. And they're now threatening to spread the strike to other parts of the country
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Now, forgive me, in the nicest possible way, you're too young to remember the winter of discontent
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but in 1978 to 79, we had a massive upsurge of trade union militancy
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We had a national bin strike across the country for weeks. It was utterly miserable
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Even then, Callaghan never called in the army. During that period, the grave diggers went on strike
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the dead went unburied, there are just the first hints of something like the winter of
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discontent when another Labour government lost all control of the trade unions and Rainer's
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just passing an employment bill through Parliament that will give the trade unions more power
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make it more easy for them to take militant action. And this is a really dangerous cocktail
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