There was a period, back in the 1970s, when ongoing strikes seldom fell below 300 a month. I was working at the time as a journalist for the UK’s leading IR journal. It was my habit to take quotes from Shakespeare as news headlines and one day I chose “Winter of Discontent”. Then Prime Minister Callaghan’s speechwriter took it up and I had my one minute of fame.
But the time when Britain was notorious for its levels of industrial unrest is now a distant memory. The number of ongoing stoppages due to industrial disputes in June 2017 was just 11. The last time it reached 30 per month was in July 2006, or climbed above one hundred a month was in February 1988.
Contrary to popular myth, widescale industrial disputes in the UK were not confined to the immediate pre-Thatcher years of the 1970s and had been a feature of labour relations back to the 1920’s general strike and beyond. In fact, strike statistics paint a very different picture of British history as it faced major crises. For instance, in the month leading up to Prime Minister Churchill’s “on the beaches” speech when the country was at its military low point during the Second World War, there were 105 work stoppages in progress. During the D Day landings in France there were 127 stoppages in progress and during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis – when the world lay on the brink of a nuclear war – the number of UK stoppages was 264.
Major political, fiscal or military events seem to have only a vague connection to the course of labour relations. The national interest has no relevance whatsoever to the pursuit of collective self-interest by trade unions. A corporate financial crisis may actually be the trigger for strike action – ironically further weakening a company that is struggling to survive. Alternatively, a company faced with inflated wage rates they have perhaps been forced to inherit can also use the age-old device of inciting a strike to reduce bulging payrolls. This could be especially the case in the transport sector – commuters having no alternative but to struggle on – whilst unions, and not management, will conveniently take the blame for curtailed transport services.
The decline of strike activity in the private sector over the last 30 years clearly originates from Margaret Thatcher’s workplace legislation of the 1980s, which outlawed secondary action and required majority votes to support strike action. But the academic literature has since abounded in conflicting theories about why disputes have remained at such a low ebb for so long. One theory concerns low worker morale, another that a layer of shop stewards had become bureaucratised since the 1980s and divorced from workers’ day-to-day experiences. Yet another theory is that the pursuit of wage demands has always been associated with collective bargaining, thus a decline in bargaining will inevitably reduce the use of such pressure tactics
But there are also many other social undercurrents in operation too. There is, for instance, an increasing emphasis upon individualism throughout modern British society. Moreover, trade unions have themselves responded to this trend by focusing on legal advisory services for individual members pursuing their particular problems
However, what we are experiencing amounts to no more than a parody of peace. If we tap into the mindset of union activists, we will see that the fundamental causes of strike action have never gone away. As they see it, the strength of “will” amongst workers has been discouraged and constrained by more precarious job contracts, the uncertainty of new contracted-out roles, and – probably most of all – mounting credit card balances and mortgage commitments. There are also now more ways to vent dissatisfaction through HR open-door policies, works councils, and grievance procedures. Militant unions will always be around to put ideology before ideas, but in recent times the broad population has been progressively forced by immediate, pressing circumstance to adopt a path that is ever more pragmatic, cautious, and stoical.