Following the official ending of the present dispute the Birmingham Branch of the CPGB-ML published the following statement on its website, birminghamworker.org.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Birmingham Worker salute our bin workers, who have this weekend brought to an end the current industrial action against a mean and petty employer.
The 2017 bin strike has been a refreshing and inspiring interruption in the day-to-day industrial life of this city.
The strike action brought Birmingham city council to its knees. It demonstrated to the working class of Birmingham the power that we have as a class when we withdraw our labour and refuse to be subjected to unjust cuts and attacks on pay and conditions.
The strike significantly demonstrated to the entire city, and indeed the entire labour movement, the anti-worker nature of the Labour-led council.
The weeks of solid strike action, waged against a Labour council supported by hired wretches, was worth ten thousand proclamations of opposition to cuts issued by moribund Trotskyist groups. This strike action was a direct blow to the Labour policy of cuts.
The action has exposed the Tricketts, Clancys and Wards [prominent Labour councillors in Birmingham] of this town. The workers of Birmingham have learnt an invaluable lesson in class politics, and no matter how desperate the attempts will be to implore workers to vote Labour next year in local elections, we are sure that class-conscious workers will not hand these traitors a single vote.
Comrades, the war between labour and capital is a guerrilla war; one skirmish is followed by another. The struggle continues.
Red salute to the bin workers!
