Irish Examiner view: Could such action happen here?

UK strikes

Striking members and supporters of the National Education Union on Whitehall, on a march from Portland Place to Westminster where they will hold a rally against the Government's controversial plans for a new law on minimum service levels during strikes. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire

A massive strike is underway in Britain, or more accurately a series of strikes, involving over half a million people from the teaching sector to the railways and the health services and beyond. 

It is the biggest strike in a decade across the water, where large-scale industrial action has often had an ideological element, from the general strike of 1926 all the way through to the miners’ strike of 1984/85.

In those two cases, industrial action set the establishment against the workforce, and there are echoes of those strikes in the current unrest. 

It is seen as a direct rebuke to the chaotic Tory government, and not just from those taking up the placards on the picket lines. 

Yesterday, the Welsh government education minister blamed unrest in his country on the “frankly disgraceful position [of] the UK government [as they] aren’t making enough funding available across the UK for public services”.

Brexit is proving a toxic addition in the current political mix in Britain, where the government’s cosseting of the wealthy is in contrast with the sharp economic shocks being experienced by the vast majority of people. 

Little wonder we learned this week that Britain’s is the only G7 economy predicted to shrink in 2023.

The current dissatisfaction in Ireland has a variety of causes, many of which would be recognisable to those in Britain. 

Troubles with accommodation and housing, the catastrophic state of healthcare, the cost-of-living crisis, the threat of the far right, the pressure on State services. 

Many of those issues are not exclusive to these shores, which begs a question.

Would large-scale industrial action here be a means to resolving some of those problems? Is the Irish trade union sector capable of that level of co-ordination?

Perhaps those questions will become relevant if the strike in Britain is successful and can be seen as a template to follow here.