The cabinet is taking a dangerous gamble when it calculates that the public will blame the unions, not the government, for an advent calendar of strikes
Picket lines at hospitals of all places. Workers in many critical roles on strike. A contingencies unit scrambled together in Downing Street to respond to the crisis. The army on standby. Ministers secretly debating whether things were getting so dire that they should declare a national state of emergency. The winter of discontent of the late 1970s dealt a death blow to the credibility of James Callaghan’s government. In his memoirs, the Labour prime minister lamented that he was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable “contagion” that doomed him to defeat at the subsequent election.
History does not repeat itself, but it can rhyme. There are some obvious parallels between the tsunami of industrial action that engulfed the Callaghan government and the waves of strikes surging towards Rishi Sunak. Now, as then, public sector employees are in the vanguard of workers trying to maintain the real value of their incomes at a time of galloping inflation. Now, as then, ministers are rejecting claims for better pay on the grounds that the country cannot afford the demands. Now, as then, the result is an escalating conflict between government and unions that paralyses vital services and disrupts day-to-day life.
