Workers facing “scale of hardship I have never seen”, Matt Wrack warns

Matt Wrack has warned that workers are facing a “scale of hardship I have never seen” as wages fail to keep pace with rapidly rising inflation, describing how he has seen the firefighters he represents using food banks.

Speaking at a LabourList fringe event this morning, ‘Public ownership and picket lines – which side is Labour on?’, the Fire Brigades general secretary said “support for workers in struggle should be ABC for Labour MPs”.

“If you can’t stand in solidarity, you don’t deserve to be a Labour MP,” he added. Wrack predicted that the country will see a “growing strike wave” in the coming months, and also told the attendees that to be opposed to public ownership was “going against public mood”.

Keir Starmer was criticised by trade unions earlier this year after instructing Labour frontbenchers not to appear on picket lines during the RMT rail strikes. Frontbenchers, including Lisa Nandy, have since been seen with striking workers.

Starmer said last month that he understood why people were going on strike but argued that his job as Labour leader is “different” to that of a trade union general secretary and that “the single best thing I could do for [workers on strike] is to get a Labour government elected”.

John McDonnell, appearing on the panel alongside Wrack, suggested that he thought the Labour leader had been advised to “sit on the fence” on the issue by. He also said he felt the party had “completely misread the public mood” on strikes.

Cat Hobbs, the director of the campaign group We Own It, spoke about the popularity of public ownership. She told the fringe that issues like sewage pollution were giving public ownership of utilities political “traction” that it did not have at the 2019 election.

She highlighted LabourList polling of party members by Survation earlier this summer, which found that 94% of members think that rail and water services should be run in the public sector. 87% of members said the same for energy, while 85% said Royal Mail should be run in the public sector.

McDonnell agreed, telling the event that “intellectually we need to re-open the debate within the Labour Party” about democratic control of services and industry.

Ed Miliband, Labour’s Shadow Climate and Net Zero Secretary, told an event this afternoon that the Labour Party is “continuing to look at common ownership across different areas, including energy”. Louise Haigh also confirmed today that Labour would renationalise rail if the party won the next general election.

Ahead of conference, Labour for a Green New Deal’s motion – which called for “democratic public ownership models across the economy, led by national public ownership of key sectors” – was ruled out of order by the conference arrangement committee (CAC) because it “covers more than one topic”.

Delegates passed a motion proposed by Unite this afternoon, however, that called for a “new political and societal consensus” expressing the need for “taking back control of essential services and utilities through new models of democratic and efficient public ownership”.

Discussing the internal climate of the party, chair of the LabourList fringe event Zarah Sultana said that while Labour is “meant to be a broad church… the way the party treats those on the left is not adhering to that”.

McDonnell agreed, suggesting that the Labour leader should “appoint Zarah to the front bench”, adding: “What are you afraid of?”. He warned that the approach currently being taken by the leadership is “wasting talent”.

WATCH THE FULL EVENT HERE