Here is an opinion of a boater about a licence strike:
My boat is my home. Over a five year period CRT want to raise my licence by around £600. That’s an additional half on top of the fee I already pay. I want to make a stand and I want to refuse to pay such an excessive rise but I’m nervous about a participating in the proposed licence strike. I don’t want to jeopardise my home.
I feel a powerful need to do something to stop CRT getting away with this punitive and destructive surcharge, particularly in the face of reduced services and fat salaries at the top of their organisation. What they’re doing with moorings is what was called embourgoisement when old terraced houses in towns got bought up by the middle classes and working people were priced out of those areas. The same when council houses were sold off. The CRT is looking, by design or by default, to price a whole section of society off the water. Where those people go, CRT don’t seem to care. What they’re doing by running services down is impoverishing the lives of all canal users, not just boaters. Their justifications and their figures are, at best, questionable. What’s their motivation?
Over many years, and in completely different situations from this one, I have had involvement in strikes and coordinated actions. The empowering factor in those activities for the people involved has always been numbers. To stand side by side with people seeking to achieve the same aim is powerful, reassuring and, even if the purpose of the action isn’t fully realised, provides future security in knowing you have each other’s interests at heart. The ripple effects create change somewhere else along the way. It changes the people who are involved and it makes those seeking to squash individuals and force them out of, or into compromised positions, realise that they have to rethink , because together, individual voices form a potent mass, a force to be reckoned with.
Organisations hit by strike action have to rethink their strategies. They have to sit down and negotiate with the people their proposals will adversely affect. They have to back down or compromise. I doubt the CRT would be able to continue to press such punitive payment proposals into action if enough people say “no”. The negative publicity of forcing numbers of people out of their homes would likely be counterproductive if they’re publicly shown to be making life worse by water.
I’ve been on strike as a warehouseman and as a teacher. I’ve been on mass demonstrations, squatted empty buildings, blocked machinery from digging roads across peoples beloved landscapes. Those things have had an effect. I can look back and see that some of the efforts haven’t been successful in the long term but have caused a slowing down of the process, a rethink of the necessity of a scheme and have always cost the organisations and corporations money, something they hate not having control over.
I’ve also seen things conclude with some success. A pay rise, better working conditions, an ear bent to listen in a more understanding way, negotiation of future plans with those who will be adversely affected. I’ve rarely been involved in the process of organising. I’m more a person who stands arm in arm with others who are struggling with the same imposition of stringent and ill advised policies. Standing with people is powerful. If we don’t do it, if we give in to the insecurities it raises for us, if we roll over, we don’t stand a chance of being heard or of winning our case.
The CRT isn’t a massive organisation, it’s not a multinational corporation, it’s not government. It’s a trust, a charity. It has a set of principles it ought to be adhering to. It has a broad remit and it needs to fulfil that remit in all aspects of its work. As Ccers, and it now seems, as long term moorers, they have engaged with us offering unfavourable terms. We need to take those terms back to them and say no. If we try that individually, they’ll pick us off and deny the justness of each case, as if to suggest each individual effort was pure wilfulness or criminality. If a mass of boaters coordinate to say a loud and reverberating NO, they’ll be forced to sit up and take note, to look at their strategy, to test it against a mass of adverse opinion.
How we achieve this it’s not my intention to state here. I just want to reassure myself and others that it’s possible to stop this surcharge being imposed or at least to negotiate something far more reasonable. And I want to hear enough other voices say a simple YES to decisive action so that I feel secure in taking that necessary action myself.
If you would like to ask questions about going on licence strike or agree with having a licence strike please contact Licence Strike campaign group. Licence Strike campaign group are planning to organising the licence strike, their email address is here:
To register your interest in striking by filling out their signup form: tinyurl.com/licencestrike
The campaign has produced a Q&A about the Licence Strike here:
National Bargee Travellers Association - London Branch 