by Punk » Mon Jun 25, 2018 9:38 am
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... discontentLetters (22 April) invoking the bogey of "union power" to justify Thatcherite scorched-earth policies, derive from highly selective social memories, largely created by tendentious histories and media depictions. Academic research has shown there was no monolithic union power that inflicted the "winter of discontent" on a victimised British population. The industrial actions were largely initiated by local and rank-and-file unionists, frustrated with pay restraint policies that had reduced real wages by 13% between 1975 and 1978. The TUC and other much-maligned union "barons" tried to restrain grassroots actions.
The (separate) tanker and delivery drivers' strikes may have been perceived as besieging a reader's community in Stoke, but impacts were actually patchy and temporary. West Midlands TGWU regional officials kept deliveries there going for much of the strike. The official stoppage lasted just three weeks and affected only around 20% of the haulage industry, with negligible national impacts on foodstuffs and daily necessities. The image of callous local authority gravediggers' strikes came from unofficial actions occurring only in Liverpool and Tameside for just two weeks. (Gravediggers in the free-enterprise heaven of 1990s Chicago went on strike for six weeks.)
As former Fleet Street editor Derek Jameson later recalled of press coverage of the "crisis", "
we pulled every dirty trick in the book; we made it look like it was general, universal and eternal, when it was in reality scattered, here and there, and no great problem".
Dr Bryn Jones
University of Bath
Plus the winter was at the end of the year.... Plus I suggest you read the most recent book on the subject by Tara Lopez, who dissects every myth that the tax avoiding Conservative media published.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/23/myths-reality-unions-winter-discontent
Letters (22 April) invoking the bogey of "union power" to justify Thatcherite scorched-earth policies, derive from highly selective social memories, largely created by tendentious histories and media depictions. Academic research has shown there was no monolithic union power that inflicted the "winter of discontent" on a victimised British population. The industrial actions were largely initiated by local and rank-and-file unionists, frustrated with pay restraint policies that had reduced real wages by 13% between 1975 and 1978. The TUC and other much-maligned union "barons" tried to restrain grassroots actions.
The (separate) tanker and delivery drivers' strikes may have been perceived as besieging a reader's community in Stoke, but impacts were actually patchy and temporary. West Midlands TGWU regional officials kept deliveries there going for much of the strike. The official stoppage lasted just three weeks and affected only around 20% of the haulage industry, with negligible national impacts on foodstuffs and daily necessities. The image of callous local authority gravediggers' strikes came from unofficial actions occurring only in Liverpool and Tameside for just two weeks. (Gravediggers in the free-enterprise heaven of 1990s Chicago went on strike for six weeks.)
As former Fleet Street editor Derek Jameson later recalled of press coverage of the "crisis", "[size=200]we pulled every dirty trick in the book; we made it look like it was general, universal and eternal, when it was in reality scattered, here and there, and no great problem"[/size].
Dr Bryn Jones
University of Bath
Plus the winter was at the end of the year.... Plus I suggest you read the most recent book on the subject by Tara Lopez, who dissects every myth that the tax avoiding Conservative media published. :whistle: