The 1978\u201379 Winter of Discontent retains a powerful hold on the political imagination <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
There were, of course, plenty of other strikes in the meantime. The 1959 film comedy I\u2019m All Right, Jack<\/em> satirised postwar industrial relations, poking fun not only at indolent trades unionists but also at their greedy and complacent bosses. The communist shop-steward Fred Kite (Peter Sellers)\u00a0is finally laid low when his own wife and daughter go on strike, refusing to perform their domestic chores.<\/p>\n
Communists really did have disproportionate power within the union movement, not least because of their willingness to take on arduous organisational roles. But in 1966, Labour prime minister Harold Wilson<\/a> drew ridicule when he tried to blame a strike by the National Union of Seamen (NUS) on \u201ca tightly-knit group of politically motivated men\u201d. Wilson based this suggestion of communist influence on evidence from MI5, but the militants were exploiting genuine grievances. In the end, the strike secured a transition from a 56-hour week to one of 40.<\/p>\n
Collapse of consensus<\/h3>\n
Many of the conflicts of the 1960s and 70s were driven by the attempts of governments of both complexions to enforce incomes policies, which restricted wage growth to keep prices under control. Though some moderate union leaders were willing to cooperate, they could not always control their members. Public-sector unions expanded and became more radical, and the Winter of Discontent marked the collapse of efforts to govern by consensus rather than by confrontation. When the TUC rejected Callaghan\u2019s pay policy in the summer of 1978, there followed a wave of action that set the scene for Margaret Thatcher\u2019s election triumph the following year. Contrary to myth, the Labour government was brought down not by weakness towards the unions, but rather by its insistence on taking a tough line, at a politically inopportune moment,\u00a0in the cause of reducing inflation.<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular myth, the Labour government of 1979 was not brought down by weakness towards the unions <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
A dark time for the Labour movement followed, as the Conservatives introduced laws making it harder to strike, and even banned workers at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) from joining unions. The miners\u2019 strike of 1984\u201385<\/a> was a last-gasp effort to assert union power. National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill not only wanted to halt pit closures; he sought to use extraparliamentary action to bring down the government. He failed not only because of ministers\u2019 prior efforts to build up coal stocks,\u00a0but because of his own abandonment of\u00a0the NUM\u2019s previous postwar pragmatism.<\/p>\n
As recent events perhaps show, however, no matter how tough the union laws, workers are likely to turn to action when they believe their living standards are sufficiently threatened. Strikes can be defeated through government or business power, or they can be resolved through negotiation. But unless the underlying factors change they will not go away by themselves.<\/p>\n
Richard Toye is professor of history at the University of Exeter. His books include Winston Churchill: A Life in the News<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n
This article first appeared in the February 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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