Irish Examiner view: What will Winter of Discontent bring this time around?

Today's crisis cannot be ignored

Margaret Thatcher outside 10 Downing Street following her election as British prime minister in May 1979. Picture: PA

Officially, Britain’s Winter of Discontent started in November 1978 and lasted through to February 1979 and was characterised by private and later public sector trades unions that wreaked havoc the length and breadth of the country.

At issue was the 5% pay increase limit set by Jim Callaghan’s Labour government in an attempt to control rampant inflation. This was a time when unions were screaming for pay increases so their members’ wages packets could at least keep up with the cost of living.

Rail workers and hauliers’ strikes set the ball rolling, followed by bin men, gravediggers, public servants, and NHS workers. It was, according to The Sun, “chaos”, and the same paper characterised the absence of any constructive government reaction under the infamous headline ‘Crisis? What crisis?’

Callaghan’s administration was beset by not only the coldest winter in 16 years but internal party divisions which pitted constituency MPs against the party establishment. It also saw deepening internal party divisions over its commitment to socialist ideals. Callaghan being photographed that winter swimming in the Caribbean while at an international summit in Guadeloupe only exacerbated allegations the PM was out of touch with reality.

Labour got thrashed by a Margaret Thatcher-led Conservative Party in a general election on May 3, 1979. Callaghan’s political career was over and the party did not return to government for 18 years.

All of this seems eerily similar to the Britain of 2022 where the rail workers are already engaged in industrial action and now dock workers at Felixstowe have gone on strike for the first time in 30 years.

Monday also saw barristers in England and Wales strike for more pay and in protest at a justice system they say is crumbling at the seams. At a time when the Tories are convulsed by a leadership battle and 10 Downing St is empty, the country looks like an ungoverned, unstable entity, or what an analyst at the Danish bank Saxo described as “an emerging market country”.

The unions and an angry public gave rise to Thatcherism back in 1979. What will the same combination produce this time around? Crisis? What crisis?