Biggs takes “I’m bigger than Dave Prentis” line

OVER HALF A year ago, the late John Lennon sparked controversy by telling the press that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus” – a remark that erupted, on their arrival in the USA some five months later, into the “bigger than Jesus” scandal.

It seems that Tower Hamlets Executive Mayor John Biggs has Lennon’s words in mind as the continues to bury his head in the sand over the industrial action being taken by Tower Hamlets Unison in opposition to the Tower Rewards contracts fiasco.

First, John Biggs seemed to be ignoring the industrial action – giving token support to the Unison branch’s right to strike while wishing they wouldn’t and claiming their opposition was misplaced. Now he is ignoring the General Secretary of one of Britain’s largest trade unions.

Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, has written to Biggs – assuring the Executive Mayor that he, Prentis, very much supports the industrial action which local branch members are taking. He asks the Executive Mayor to instruct the Chief Executive to return to the negotiating table. The words “don’t be such a knob, John” have not been used by Prentis, but they do come to mind.

Biggs has not replied: whether because it is beyond or beneath him to reply to Unison’s General Secretary is not clear. While John Lennon’s words had some basis in fact, Biggs assuming that he has no need to respond to Prentis does not. Support is ebbing away from the Executive Mayor as his colleagues in the Labour Party find it harder and harder to justify his maverick stand.

If John Biggs is determined to put his popularity on a par with a deity, the man who claimed his arrival in the mayoralty would unite the borough seems to have got the wrong quote. In the eyes of much of the UK labour movement, he is no visionary Executive Mayor but is just a turncoat. Or, as they could put it, “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a Very Naughty Boy.”

•Read Dave Prentis’s letter to John Biggs:
Letter

•Read more about Tower Rewards:
Tower Rewards

•Read more about the Biggs Administration:
Executive Mayor John Biggs