FT.com / Columnists / Philip Stephens - Britain has bigger problems than the unions.
Sound comment in the FT this morning:
So it is back to the 1970s. Or so the Conservatives say. Britain’s present bout of industrial unrest looks like a gift for David Cameron’s party. With a general election six weeks or so away, what could be better for the opposition than the chance to summon up grim memories of the winter of discontent?
The analogy with the crippling strikes that saw Margaret Thatcher sweep Labour from office in 1979 is at very best far-fetched.
I have my doubts, [too], as to whether floating voters will be as impressed by Mr Cameron’s rhetoric as are Conservative footsoldiers. For one thing, quite a few of them work in the public sector.
Teachers, police officers and nurses do not take kindly to being branded militants. For another, most people probably view well-heeled bankers clutching their large post-crash bonuses as better candidates for their ire.
Quite so.
And many - indeed most of those really in middle England - earning about what cabin crew get - know that this recession is being managed to make them pay and let bankers off.
Why should they feel any form of satisfaction at BA bashing people making a reasonable claim for reasonable rights when they know they're next in line to be abused?
The Tories need to be careful. Not many can remember the winter of discontent now - you have to be in your fifties. And age has left memory of a very different seventies. Cameron's on dodgy ground. Which is good news.
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There is a “popular wisdom” that all Britain’s problems in the 1970s were created by unions, trots and militants. This view is held as commonplace by everyone, it seems now. But whilst the unions were certainly not great, there were outside forces e.g. oil prices and also the quality of management to consider. As a German I am acquainted with said of Britain in the 1970s, yes the unions were terrible but the management class didn’t deserve any better.
The unions may have been a deadweight but so were the public school educated leadership. They fed off each other. That may repeat itself.
While workers in separate unions have valid issues and do need to act on them as they arise, the big picture continuum of labour liberalisations to undermine workers on a very big scale:
– deserves the attention of unions, combined
and
– is NOT party poltical in the sense that all 3 major parties (and some smaller ones) are complicit in keeping putlic attention away from it
It is real, is of high concern, and needs to be debated in the public sphere – with the voices of those affected, not jus thte elite who are not affected.
The effects of the continuum of
– EU free movement
– EU free movement of services – Posted Workers
– UK labour migration regulatory framework – the points based system – not what the govt claims it is
– Mode 4 in the trade agreements – irreversible legal trade commitments beyond national( or EU ) control once committee, allowing trasnnationals to bring in cheap labour practically from whole world
Now if anyone looks at this list and thinks
-its paranoia
-its ‘racist’ to draw attention to it
is thick
Response to James – the graph of inequality is interesting in relation to this – the years of strong unionism were the least unequal years, while now we are back on a par with the 1920’s. I seen the graphs presented by some very ‘prestigious ‘ economists, but when Ive drawn attention to the unionisation factor – so obvious but they has managed to ignore it – Ive been called a radical!
In response to Richard, I’ll forgive him for ageing me 10 years – I’m in my early forties and I well remember the uncollected rubbish piling up in the streets as snow fell.
I think that there are a lot more people than Richard thinks who remember the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79. The union action at the moment is reminiscent of then. One union kicked off action by another until the country was almost paralysed. All the time, the Labour Government fiddled like Nero.
@Richard
Oh come on – lego and union memories combined?
I really think this is fantasising on your part
@Richard M
I’m 42 and no fantasising I assure you. I was never much into Lego – played too much rugby and didn’t have enough time!!
I particularly remember the rubbish pile outside the council depot in Richmond (Surrey) as we use to drive past it on the way to visit my Nan in Chiswick