Grangemouth: The Surreal Cheer Of Defeat

IT was like a scene out of a film by the Spanish surrealist anarchist film maker Luis Buñuel such as 'The Phantom of Liberty' in which the Spanish citizens being executed in Madrid by a French firing squad on May 2nd in the famous Goya portrait, during the war with the French shout 'Viva la Tyrany' - that was what happened yesterday when the staff at Grangemouth cheered the management decision to re-open the plant and save their jobs and lose all their trade union rights.  This, it seems, could now be a watershed moment for the whole of the British trade union movement as it throws into doubt the ability of the trade unions in this country to defend their own members.

We must wait and see what the ultimate consequences are, but it should challenge the British left and the trade unions to question their overall strategy in so far as they have one.