Alex Miller, London
It was a torrid week for Prime Minister Tony Blair. On September 6, the normally Blairite defence minister, Tom Watson, resigned in protest at the PM's refusal to specify a timetable for handing over his job to a successor. The same day, six other Labour MPs resigned from their jobs as parliamentary private secretaries for the same reason.
The normally compliant MPs have been rattled by opinion polls showing Labour now trailing the Conservatives. In reaction to the resignations, on September 7 Blair confirmed his intention to resign as prime minister at some point during the coming 12 months, but refused to give a date for his departure.
During his visit to the Quinton Kynaston School in north London, Blair was jeered and heckled by students protesting against Britain's role in Iraq: the September 9 Morning Star reported that Blair "was loudly booed and faced chants of 'out, out, out' by pupils".
The September 12 Morning Star reported further trouble for the beleaguered warmonger: "On the first day of the [Trades Union Congress's conference], health union UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis revealed that almost three quarters of the 1400 employees of [National Health Service] logistics had opted for industrial action against plans to transfer them to private delivery firm DHL."
The September 12 Guardian reported that the industrial action "could disrupt the supply of equipment, from bedpans to vaccines, to hospitals and surgeries across England. It is likely to start with a national one-day stoppage and could be followed by lightning strikes at depots. The strike vote follows a government decision to sell NHS Logistics to a German company, DHL, giving it a contract worth £3.7bn over 10 years."
Blair's speech to the TUC was met with boos, catcalls, and walkouts. The September 13 Morning Star reported that as Blair began his speech, "delegations from the RMT [rail and maritime workers], PCS [public servants], FBU [fire fighters] and UCU [further and higher education] unions booed and held up placards ordering him to 'go now'. Others demanded 'public services not private profit', 'troops out', and pointed out that it was 'time to go' for the embattled Prime Minister."
RMT general secretary Bob Crow led a walkout during the speech. He told the Morning Star: "We walked out because he kicked our union out of the Labour Party. He wouldn't listen to our view — why should we listen to his? His legacy will be the prime minister who privatised more things than Thatcher, refused to repeal the anti-union laws and took us into three illegal wars."
The BBC reported on September 12 that Gordon Brown — currently chancellor of the exchequer and widely tipped to be Blair's successor — used a speech at a private TUC dinner during the congress to attack the union protests. Brown demanded that the unions fall back into line behind Blair's "reform" agenda.
The Stop the War Coalition is planning a national 'Time to Go' demonstration to coincide with the Labour Party conference in Manchester on September 23.