In an interview with the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, Dennis Skinner, veteran Labour MP, has said that he’ll turn down a pay rise until the government “unfreeze[s] the pay of working-class people” and “restore[s] free collective bargaining” And that won’t be for a very long time”.
82-year-old Skinner – also known as the Beast of Bolsover – went on to comment on the impending Scottish referendum. He put forward an impassioned case for people in Scotland voting ‘No’ against independence, explaining:
“I can’t understand some of the trade unionists falling for flag-waving in Scotland. It’s meaningless. We’re citizens of the world…I can’t remember anybody in the Scottish NUM saying to me they had a different agenda. The problems in Scotland were the same as the problems in Derbyshire, Durham, Yorkshire, South Wales and Kent. Nationalists divide working people when we should be united.”
Skinner’s book about his life ‘Sailing Close to the Wind’ will be serialised in the Mirror this week and weekend before it is published next week.
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