Jim Hopkins: On your Marx, get set, to the picket lines

Teachers and actors may not resemble the downtrodden of old, but, hey, there's a fight to be fought! Photo / APN

To the barricades, comrades, to the picket lines make haste. A battle looms with the bourgeoisie, there is no time to waste. With our hammers and our sickles we'll leave our fearsome marx on the bloated and the greedy, on the running dogs and sharks.

Be loyal to your class, mates. Let the workers' will prevail. Shed your blood on the beach of freedom, friends, and save the proletarian whale.

Yes, all right, that's not exactly what the rapacious boss classes want to read while gorging themselves of a morning on the wholemeal toast of exploitation. But what care we for their squeamish qualms.

Scrub as they might, they will never remove the mighty stain of solidarity from the tablecloth of capitalism.

For we are the workers of the world and we will unite! We will to the barricades hasten. Our sabots will ring on the cobbles of chaos and the tumbrils will rumble again as the guillotine of justice falls on the necks of the oppressors. Our duty is clear, comrades. There's a fight to be fought and a strike to be struck. The running dogs of capitalism must be muzzled. The class struggle lives. It's Tolpuddle Martyrs time, team.

As fellow travellers on revolution's road, we must stand beside our downtrodden brothers and sisters and proclaim undying proletarian support for our crushed and cashless comrades, the poor and huddled masses of ... ummm ... errrr ... actors and teachers.

Okay, it's not quite the good old bad old days and they're not quite the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Actors may play emaciated match girls, jaws rotted by phosphorous but, for them, it's only make up.

And teachers aren't exactly child chimney sweeps either. They don't spend hours trapped alone in dank and sooty shafts. They do spend hours trapped with each other in dull and dreary conferences but that just feels the same.

Neither group has the poster appeal of those great icons of organised labour, the hard muscled miners, faces blackened by old king coal, bodies broken by the pit. But they're the best we've got, folks. We must support them.

Because it's the right thing to do and because it will be fun! For the first time in a long time, we'll feel cleansed and purposeful, virtuous and united - part of a great mass movement of the masses fighting to break the shackles of economic imperialism.

Especially with the actors. Heck, it's not like they go out at the drop of a clapper. Generally speaking, our thesps are a docile bunch. They don't make a hobbit of putting the word "industrial" in front of "Action!" Recent productions haven't fallen foul of militant unrest. Those lucky enough to get a part in the slash-and-bonk-fest Spartacus clearly understood that "strike" was something they were only supposed to do with their swords. ("Ohhhhh, sorry, luvvy. I didn't mean to bwuise you.")

Those in the hot sex scenes didn't down tools till they got a Viagra allowance. So let's send a warning to Warners, knowing our cast is clear. Let's stand beside them when they picket the studios and proudly sing their version of that historic protest anthem, The Red Flag:-

The actors' flag is carpet red

In Gucci gear the actors tread

But cannot pay their debts and bills

Lest they receive residuals

So raise the actors' banner high

And squeeze some fees before we die

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer

We'll keep The Hobbit shooting here!

Sadly, it's harder to feel kinship with the teachers, who've apparently said Goodbye, Mr Chips and welcome the drips. This is, after all, the bad-mannered bunch who couldn't even be bothered to give their boss, Anne Tolley, a desultory round of applause this week.

If To Sir, with Love was ever reissued, it would likely be called To Her with Snub. Here's hoping every spotty little knife-toting herbert who refuses to applaud the next special guest at assembly is allowed to be as insolent.

So great is the turmoil in teaching today, some capitalist lackeys have argued that education's real victims are parents. They're the ones who should be going on strike.

They're the ones being crushed by the jackboot heel of state tyranny. Forced by law to send their kids to school from five to 16, obliged to tolerate the tosh that passes for educational theory, required to accept not being told if their 14-year-old daughter - for whom they remain legally responsible - is about to get an abortion.

But it's the teachers who've chosen to act. They're the ones with nothing to lose but their chalk - oh, and National Standards, of course! They're the ones who have to ingore bad slepling, noenixsitnat garmamr and the horror of hols while everyone else is working.

So, if only because our children will be spared their ministrations for a time, we should support their strike as well.

To the barricades, comrades. There's a battle to be won!!!! (Gents a plate, ladies a pitchfork.)