Shadow Defence Minister Mark Francois has declared it is "not the job of the Army" to tackle Birmingham's bin crisis - hitting out at the "hopelessly mismanaged" City Council.The city's overflowing bin crisis has become so severe that crews from neighbouring councils have been brought in to collect waste.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Let's look at the context. On the one hand, you've got an absolutely hopelessly mismanaged, bankrupt Labour Council.
00:09And on the other side of the dispute, you've got an increasingly militant trade union in Unite, which happens to sponsor Angela Rayner.
00:18So we have a thing called the Armed Forces Covenant in this country, which means we should respect the military and their families,
00:24and they should be at no disadvantage compared to the rest of the population because of their military service.
00:31It would be a travesty if we dragged soldiers away from their loved ones over the Easter holidays in order to man bin lorries,
00:40because Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, can't sort out an industrial dispute being led by the union that sponsors her in the first place.
00:50So it's not the army's job to get Labour out of trouble, basically.
00:54No, it's not. We've used the military in the past. For instance, in 2014, we had a lot of flooding in the West Country.
01:01We called in the army and the marines. They assisted with that.
01:04Over in Sierra Leone, we sent medics out to fight the Ebola virus. We never lost a single person.
01:11I was personally in charge of that day today as the armed forces minister.
01:15I don't think any reasonable person would object to using the military for those sorts of tasks.
01:22But using them to dig Labour out of a hole because they're in the middle of an embarrassing industrial dispute,
01:28I think would be completely wrong and it would go down extremely badly with the troops and with their families.
01:34That's not what those guys and girls signed up for.
01:37Yeah. I mean, there's also the aspect to it, which is that Angela Rayner appears to have been quite keen to say,
01:42I'm calling in the army to tackle the Birmingham bin crisis.
01:46And then when you look at the detail on this, it seems to be three blokes who are not actually in Birmingham
01:52or got any plans to go to Birmingham who are trying to just deal with some logistical difficulties.
01:57So it's almost like she's saying, well, I'm calling in the army because she thinks that's what people want to hear.
02:03It's not actually true, is it?
02:04Well, we found out, as I said, in the flooding in 2014, when people turned up in green, as the saying has it,
02:11you know, a lot of the residents there who'd been going through misery with the flooding were very reassured.
02:17So, but at the moment, it looks as if they've assigned three logistical experts to advise on how you might clear the rubbish.
02:25But they've not ruled out using troops completely.
02:29As I just said, I think that would be a real mistake if they did that.
02:33But look, it's getting worse because Unite, as I understand it today, turned down the latest payoff.
02:40Yep, they did.
02:41And they're now threatening to spread the strike to other parts of the country.
02:46Now, forgive me, in the nicest possible way, you're too young to remember the winter discontent.
02:51But in 1978 to 79, we had a massive upsurge of trade union militancy.
02:57We had a national bin strike across the country for weeks.
03:01It was utterly miserable.
03:03Even then, Callaghan never called in the army.
03:06During that period, the grave diggers went on strike.
03:09The dead went unburied.
03:11There are just the first hints of something like the winter of discontent, when another Labour government lost all control of the trade unions.
03:22And Reina's just passing an employment bill through Parliament that will give the trade unions more power, make it more easy for them to take militant action.
03:33And this is a really dangerous cocktail.
03:36And this is a really dangerous cocktail.