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Edited on Tue Mar-08-11 06:14 AM by LeftishBrit
and I think that it's not very similar to anything going on in the USA or Britain now. At that time, strikes were still mainly JUST for higher pay (important enough in itself, of course!), rather than also for the very survival of jobs and services. The government was Labour. And, though the problem has been greatly exaggerated by the demonizers of the unions, there is a kernel of truth in the view that at the time, people who were in less powerful unions were disadvantaged with respect to those in more powerful unions. Some reform was needed. But reform, not destruction which is what happened.
What's going on now is more akin to 1983-1984 in this country than the Winter of Discontent. That was when Thatcher and her cohort Sir Ian Macgregor destroyed the mining industry, who fought back but were ultimately defeated - as was British industry in general, very tragically for the people concerned and for our country.
Why did Thatcher win the war on the miners? Several reasons, and nothing to do with unions or strikes being in themselves counterproductive. (1) Much of the press, especially the Murdoch press, were *extremely* pro-Thatcher and anti-union, and people here then were even less clued in to the propaganda than they are nowadays. (2) The miners' leader of the time, Arthur Scargill, was not ultimately as effective as he could have been, and made a number of wrong moves. (3) There was less co-ordination and unity between different groups than there should have been; and the issue could be portrayed as concerning *only* the mining industry (quite bad enough) rather than British industry and public services as a whole. I think that now there is more recognition, at least in Britain, that 'we are all in this together', and not quite in the sense that David Cameron meant!
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