National Gallery protests against privatisation and union-busting

Rebecca Anderson reports from Saturday’s rally at the National Gallery.

On 30 May, 500 people gathered outside the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square to protest against privatisation and victimisation.

Staff at the National Gallery have so far taken 34 days of strike action against privatisation. The government wants to sell two thirds of the staff to a private company, who will then be responsible for looking after some of the world’s most precious works of art. Many are concerned that this is the first step towards wholesale privatisation of the gallery.

One of the lead negotiators in the dispute, Candy Udwin, was the first union rep sacked under the new Tory government. The bosses at the gallery thought that they were cutting the head off the strike but instead the workers are insisting that this dispute is now not resolved until Candy is reinstated.

When Candy spoke at the demonstration she made the point that “if you had asked us a year ago what kind of strike action would be most effective we would have said five or six two-hour strikes. If you’d told us that we were going to take five or six weeks of strike action we wouldn’t have believed you”.

After the rally we surprised the police by marching up to the entrance to the gallery where we sat down in front of the gates, held up paintings of sunflowers (the painting that symbolises the National Gallery) and chanted “Privatisation – no way! National Gallery here to stay!”

If the government doesn’t back down and more industrial action is called then let’s all support the fight to keep the National Gallery public and reinstate Candy. Each and every struggle that we win will inspire other people to fight back against austerity, privatisation, victimisation and oppression.