Looking at piles of rubbish overflowing outside the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh last week, Pam Strachan was transported back to another time when the UK was in the grip of large-scale industrial action.
In 1984, the 73-year-old Edinburgh resident remembers having to use boiling water to kill maggots spilling out of bin bags when she was visiting her dying mother in Liverpool.
In other circumstances, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, might be expected to be under greater strain. But such is the dominance of the debate over independence, and the passions on both sides with polls showing opinion to be almost evenly divided, that other matters tend to take a back seat.
Refuse collectors in the Scottish capital have been on strike since August 18, putting it in the spotlight for the wrong reasons during the Edinburgh International Festival, the city’s busiest month of cultural activity. On Friday, GMB, one of the three unions involved, added 16 councils as rubbish began to pile up in more Scottish regions.
With the festival winding up, Strachan said “they must just, please, settle”.
The strain workers are under, which is underpinning the protests, was reinforced on Friday as energy regulator Ofgem confirmed that UK households faced electricity and gas bill increases of 80 per cent, just days after Citigroup said inflation might peak at more than 18 per cent in early 2023.
Sturgeon’s government is coming under increasing pressure to intervene, with no sign of a new offer or agreement in talks between public sector unions and Cosla, the body representing councils across Scotland, which are expected to resume today.
The protests have provided ammunition for her opponents, who blame her for failing to prevent them and for taking them too lightly once they got under way. Miles Briggs, a Conservative party MSP, said her appearance at a Fringe festival event on Wednesday was “beyond a joke”, while others criticised her for travelling to Copenhagen on Friday to open the devolved government’s Nordic office.
But analysts said Sturgeon had sufficient political cover because allegiances in Scotland were so dominated by the debate on independence. In recent months, her Scottish National party has withstood a barrage of criticism over the non-delivery of ferries, NHS waiting times and broader questions about the government’s record after 15 years in power.
While pro-union parties see the labour crisis as a result of the devolved government’s misplaced priorities, supporters of independence probably accepted the argument that budget cuts by Westminster were to blame, said Anthony Salamone, managing director of European Merchants, a think-tank based in Edinburgh.
“Almost everything in Scottish politics is viewed within the prism of the independence debate,” he said. “At the end of the day, independence is king and that will shape how most people respond.”
But the SNP government has yielded to pressure on it to get involved, after initially arguing that the dispute was between local councils and their employees, and that it had played its role by allocating an extra £140mn to help local authorities push their pay offer up to 5 per cent, from 3.5 per cent earlier in August.
John Swinney, the deputy first minister, has also met unions and Cosla for talks, though these have yet to deliver any breakthrough.
On Friday, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the bin strike posed a public health risk and the government was doing “everything we can to help” resolve it.
The strikes are escalating across Scotland. Waste and recycling members of Unison, the biggest public-sector union, started a four-day walkout on Friday at eight councils, including Aberdeenshire and Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, which they will then resume on September 7.
Support staff at schools and nurseries will join in the protests from September 6. The union is also set to ballot 50,000 members at NHS Scotland in October, after rejecting a 5 per cent offer.
Unite, another union in dispute with local authorities, said it had served notice of strike action in services in 20 councils across Scotland. On Thursday, it said its members at the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) had rejected a “derisory offer” of 1.7 per cent to 4 per cent, and would go on strike from September 8.
Despite the disruption, focus on the independence debate will probably dominate voters’ preferences, said Mark Diffley, founder of Edinburgh-based polling company, The Diffley Partnership.
“The constitutional question dominates public opinion more now than it has done at any time, and that gives the SNP some cover.”
The mood last week on Edinburgh’s Grassmarket seemed to underscore Sturgeon’s resilience. The proximity of festering rubbish to the street’s European-style terraced restaurants and pubs frequented by tourists have raised just the kind of health concerns Swinney referred to. But the festivities went on.
One member of the audience at the Fringe event attended by Sturgeon drew sustained applause when she thanked the first minister, who led the SNP to a landslide victory in Holyrood’s elections in May 2021, for “all you do for Scotland”.
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