UK union members walk out on Blair

[rpannier]

BRIGHTON, England (AP) -- Union members booed and hissed Prime Minister Tony Blair during a speech to an organized labor conference Tuesday, and more than a dozen delegates walked out to protest his efforts to partly privatize public services.

After a rocky trip to the Middle East, where he encountered demonstrations, and bitter infighting at home over when he would leave office, the Trades Union Congress had promised to be a tough audience.

snip

"What is the point of listening to someone when you can't believe a word they say?" said Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which represents 73,000 workers in Britain's rail, bus, road freight and shipping industries.

"Blair promised us a publicly owned railway, an ethical foreign policy and fair labor laws," Crow said. "But we've been delivered privatization, illegal wars and the boast that Britain maintains the harshest anti-union legislation in western Europe."

The link to this article may be found at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/09/12/britain.blair.ap/index.html

[Greeby]

1. Word to Bob Crow

We've NEVER had a publicly owned railway. We had a government-owned one, then a corporate-owned one, but never public

[Vidar]

2. Way to go, Brits!