In the Netherlands there is a very militant cleaners’ strike that has been going on for more than a month. This is not the first time; in 2010 they were out on strike for nine weeks, the longest strike in the Netherlands since the 1930s. There are lessons in this for the whole labour movement.

In 2010 there was a right-wing government installed in the Netherlands. After a honeymoon period, it seems its initial popularity has faded. Internally it is in crisis, it has just faced a teachers’ strike and the Socialist Party is at its biggest popularity ever in the polls.

Meanwhile the nineteenth century was proving to be another age of poverty, oppression and starvation for the mostly Catholic tenant farmers. They were still at the mercy of the landlords who charged increasingly exorbitant rents and would not hesitate to evict any family who could not pay. Keeping his tenancy was a matter of life or death to the farmer and his family.

There is an old Lithuanian saying: “labour embellishes the person”. But the situation in our country calls to mind more to the Latin proverb “labor hominem firmat” (“labour hardens the person”). It certainly hardens the mind of the beer-producing company ‘Svyturys-Utenos Alus’ (part of the ‘Carlsberg Group’), as the workers had a chance to witness for themselves.

Workers have reacted with anger and bewilderment at the latest statements coming from Ed Miliband and Ed Balls endorsing continuation of the Coalition’s public sector wage freeze and in effect accepting Coalition cuts. This represents a sharp turn to the right by the Labour leadership, justified – we are told– by the remark that a “changed” Labour Party needed to deliver “fairness” in tough times.

Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is turning into an elaborate parody of the emptiness of reformism. With capitalism unable to afford any reforms, he is like the school pupil who works extremely hard to avoid working whilst giving the impression of being studious. He is trying very very hard, tossing and turning, to give the impression that reformism can work without any actual reforms. Unfortunately for Ed, in this case the illusion does not work.