…BUT THIS TIME it has the feel of a once successful 1960s pop group reprising an earlier success, by taking to the stage once more for one more payday.
The unions have been kept from any influence since Margaret Thatcher limited their power in the 1980s through the use of the law. Now, with a debt crises and a need to take a scythe to public spending, the unions scent an opportunity for what they hope will surpass the chaos of the 1970’s when the streets stank and rats were given free range; and bodies were being left unburied; and, periodically, the lights went out.
It was a time when the country became known as the sick man of Europe, and all the main political parties were made complicit by their feebleness in keeping the enemy from the gate. The unions at the time were encouraged to walk into Downing Street whenever they felt like it, and, over “beer and sandwiches” would tell the politicians what they must do to avoid the next strike; and the politicians invariably did it – or at least met them more than half-way.
Why Margaret Thatcher is loathed today by the Left, and in particular the union bosses, is because she turned the country around. Cars were no longer being built where the door could become unhinged at any moment (including the prime minister’s[1]). Privatisation was fostered by the then Conservative government, and because of the much needed union reform, private investors had confidence in buying and investing in all the old nationalised industries that the unions had held sway over and managers had abandoned.
It was a drab decade where candles, for a while, replaced light bulbs. The country was in a mess of the union’s making, as well as of the politician’s frailty to act. No Labour government dared confront the “union Barons” for fear of losing much needed revenue. No Labour politician who had the ambition to lead his party, dared cross the brothers if he or she wished to realise their ambition – and this, sadly, remains the case today.
There are no dark satanic mills; there are no children being sent up chimneys or being lowered into the dank abyss of a 19th century coal mine; there are no Dickensian justifications for having unions. Most, if not all, employers are realising that their workforce are their greatest asset. In the private sector our major companies are appreciating their employees worth; and even where this falls short, the law, in terms of the minimum wage, intervenes.
It is not perfect but we have moved on from the 1970s; and working conditions in the private sector are far better than they were then. As for the public sector, the terms and conditions of those employed have, if anything, outstripped those of the private sector. If ever the term “job for life” meant anything, it applied to the public sector. While the private sector paid their wages, the public sector made hay with those taxes. Pension schemes that today the average private sector worker could only dream about were contracted to public service employees.
When the Blair government came to power they poured billions into the NHS, in a final attempt to harbour reform, but only a third went on patient care. The rest was divvied up among the health professionals – consultants, doctors, nurses and every other NHS functionary found themselves financially better off due to the private sector.
The private sector has been, what in the acting profession is described as a “white angel”. Every day people go to work for companies that, if they help make them a success, will receive a wage increase, as well as seeing the company they work for employ more people, which will increase the tax intake.
The private sector is the wealth creating sector. The public sector provides the country with, not the wealth from which taxes are taken, but the services needed. These services are determined by politicians either at the national or local level: and in times of hardship for the nation such services must be scrutinised for savings; just as happens within a private company.
FROM THIS NOVEMBER the unions are threatening to reprise the 1970s. Their leaders, among whom are Dave Prentice, Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka, Steve Gillian; are all vying with each other to succeed where Arthur Scargill failed. They all believe that they now have the opportunity to avenge the unions humiliation suffered under Margaret Thatcher; and once more dominate the political culture of this country.
Whatever grievances the public sector workers believe they have; their union leaders are only using those grievances as a means to a political end. In other words a repeat of the old Marxist mantra of, the means justifying the end.
That end is the restoration of union power which no government can afford to accommodate, including a Labour one. The unions, like the CBI, are just another pressure group, reduced to such a status by the Thatcher years.
This November will be the last hurrah of British trade unionism. We thought that such a nemeses had occurred when the Thatcher era arrived and departed. But resentment within the labour movement can last centuries; and yet the apathy among union members still continue to promote Neanderthals into every vacant office of leadership within every union.
Come late November, the public sector will have voted for various days of action; which, in effect, means whatever the union leadership has managed to conjure up to disrupted the lives of ordinary people will take place.
There is a strategy afoot to cause the maximum disruption to our country. I do not believe that the vast majority of the British people welcomes such a prospect and will make their feelings plain to the union leaders come November.
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