quote:
Originally posted by Ovacikpeedoff
Remember the time of the 3 day week. British Leyland were striking every week over unofficial teabreaks. Mass pickets and flying pickets. Unions picketing companies that were not directly involved in strikes. If one lot were not stiking then the others were. The unions that kept Callaghan and Wilson in power. The unions that eventually brought down the Heath government.The unions that made the UK the laughing stock of the world.
The unions that took on Margaret Thatcher and lost. She took the unions on and beat them. I did not like the way she humiliated the miners but she was right to take them on. People had a belly full of unions and so much so that they elected the Tories in the next 3 elections.
When I questioned you earlier on your assertion that
the unions ruled the country I was hoping your response would bring some broader analysis to the debate, but unfortunately it hasn't, you have simply realed off a set of headlines. And if I may observe it looks like you have pulled the headlines from the front of the Daily Mail, and so instead of bringing light to our discussion, you have brought heat. The picture you paint is certainly not one I recognise of the time, but perhaps it is when viewed and informed through the prism of the press in the UK.
Your point of the three day week driven by the miners strike has already been answered by Colwyn. I'd just simply add that this was the first national miners actions, since the coal mie owners lock out of 1929, and in 1973 the miners were amongst the lowest paid organised workers in the UK.
However, the overwhelming majority of working people's experience in the UK in the 70s was very different. Almost all never had any contact with flying or mass pickets, or indeed picketing of any kind. And even with a majority of workers at that time being in a union, only a few actually experienced strikes or industrial action of any kind. Indeed there is a higher level of industrial action during Thatcher's government than during the seventies, including many workers who had not taken industrial action before.
Not sure about the unions keeping Wilson and Callaghan in power, but these governments did work with the unions to develop voluntary pay restraint to help the country drive down inflation and recover from the double economic blows of the oil price shock and the Barber boom. Fair to say though that by 1977/8 many workers, particualry in the public sector, were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with pay restraint on them, whilst company profits were booming!
Finally, onto the UK's standing in the world as a result of the unions. The UK was always around average in the developed world in terms of trade union density in the workforce, number of strikes, number of workers taking part in industrial action etc. And when you look at the more 'militant' industrial sectors, such as motor manufacture, construction or mining, the story in most other countries was often the same, and in some cases worse. So we were not so very different in that respect from our European and North American counterparts.
Finally, on the point that Thatcher was elected simply on the basis of the electorate having had a 'bellyfull of the unions' is so partial and simplistic an argument as to be laughable. The reason Thatcher was elected 3 times are many, high on the list was the fractured opposition, the SDP split from Labour, the growth of third party politics (SLD etc.) and amongst the other I cannot forget the judicious stuffing of gold into some voters mouths by the sale of public assets on the cheap through privatisation. Can you really lose when you sell ten pound notes for a fiver
