Everybody out!
By Steve Sharp
This was the catchphrase of The Rag Trade, the 1960’s TV comedy series filmed in black and white which was repeated in colour in the 1970’s.
Starring Reg Varney, Sheila Hancock and Barbara Windsor the show shed light on gender politics and class war on the factory floor. The female textile workers led by the male foreman and business owner went on strike in just about every episode. Strikes were funny then.
In Britain, documented strike action started in the 17th century when groups of skilled workers used brief periods of industrial action to get better conditions for work and pay. During the 18th century various pieces of legislation made strikes illegal. But when the trade union act of 1871 allowed trade unions to become legal bodies, a flurry of industrial activity occurred in industries such as coal mining and textiles as new unions fought for better conditions.
Following a lull during the First World War, industrial action intensified in the 1920s as employers tried to reduce wages amid post war economic and political change. In 1926 162 million days we're lost when 1.7 million workers went on strike in support of a million miners.
In more recent memory the miners’ strikes during the Heath Government led to power cuts and the three-day week. Even Harold Wilson’s Government couldn't stop the rot as he presided over the Winter of Discontent, with everyone from dockers to bin men joining in. There was even a concern about the possibility of burials at sea due to a strike by Merseyside grave diggers in 1978.
The election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in May 1979 signalled a period of major restrictions on trade union power. These laws restricted the right of picketing, prevented unions from bringing their members out in support of other unions and introduced fines and asset seizures for unions that struck without a ballot.
The first test of this was an unballoted strike in 1984 which lasted for nearly a year. It progressed into a national strike as Arthur Scargill sent “flying pickets” to different picket lines around the country by car and coach. Mass picketing led to violent clashes and even deaths. At the end of the year the strike ended without any settlement and the industry broken, never to recover.
My uncle worked at a colliery in Wakefield where this photograph below was taken.
As a “white collar” worker he did not strike but he and his family suffered terrible abuse for it.
My parents, both lifelong NHS employees, never went on strike but watched over the demise of the docks and fishing industries in Hull.
In a Blackpool speech, Labour politician Aneurin Bevan said, “This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
It wasn’t so much lack of organisation that killed off these and other industries like car manufacturing, but self-inflicted wounds.
It is difficult not to have some sympathy today’s public sector nurses, paramedics and teachers who have endured low pay, poor conditions and unspeakable stress but history says striking might not be the answer.
Same goes for rail workers, but they face a different problem of negotiation with their private employers.
Ambulance crews across the country have taken part in a legal ballot and have voted to go on strike everywhere……. except East Anglia.
It seems that there was a very low response from union members in the region because of late delivery of ballot papers…………due to the postal worker’s strike.
Steve