THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT

1. THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT A widespread stoppage of work by thousands of British workers in the winter of 1978-79

2. Labour 1974 manifesto stated "It is our intention to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families." However the 1974-9 government imposed the greatest attacks on working class living standards since the depression of the 1930s.

3. 1975 TheLabour government of James Callaghan's attempt to enforce limits on pay rises to curb inflation. Inflation had reached a height of nearly 26.9% in August 1975. Harold Wilson's Labour government, wanting to avoid increasingly large levels of unemployment agreed a voluntary incomes policy with the TUC that would cap pay increases for workers at limits set by the government. The government announced a limit on wage rises for all workers earning under £8,500 a year. Further limits on pay increases were proposed by the government through 1976. • Housing - By 1978 fewer council houses were being built than in any year since the Second World War. • Health - 25,000 hospital bed places were removed in the first two years of the Labour government. • Education - teachers suffered large scale redundancies for the first time in living memory. • Prices - doubled between February 1974 and December 1978. • Jobs - an average of 1,000 a day went in Labour's first three years. Unemployment was 500,000 in 1974. It reached 1.6 million in 1976. • Wages - a family of four on average earnings was worse off in 1979 than in 1974. • Source: http://www.conservapedia.com/Winter_of_Discontent

4. 1978 Inflation had more than halved by 1978, but the government introduced a new limit of 5% on wage increases. The 5% policy was overwhelmingly rejected by the unions and the immediate return to free collective bargaining was pushed for. Besides, an announcement was made by James Callaghan in September that an expected general election was postponed to the following year to allow the economy to stabilise. The first protest came from the workers at Ford Motors. In September a pay increase was set by the company within the allotted 5% designated by the government and was rejected by the workers. A strike began when 15,000 Ford workers walked off the job on September 22 and by September 26 had been joined by 57,000 others. Consequently, 23 Ford factories throughout the country were empty.

5. The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), decided to support the Ford strike. The workers' demands of a 25% pay increase and 35 hour week were made official and negotiations with Ford commenced. After several weeks the TGWU agreed on a 17% pay increase and urged the strikers to return to work. When it became obvious that Ford was going to offer a pay deal over the 5% limit, the government tried to avoid further strikes. A weak policy was worked out but the government attempted to impose sanctions on Ford for breach of the pay policy soon after a deal had been struck with the union. But Callaghan failed to have the sanction voted in Parliament, which made the government powerless to enforce the 5% limit of pay increase, leaving the door open for more strikes in private industry and later in the public sector.

6. The situation worsens… The lorry drivers got on strike demanding pay increases. Tank drivers followed suit and thousands of petrol stations were closed. Refineries were picketed. After bringing supplies transported by road to a virtual standstill, the drivers accepted a pay deal just £1 less per week than the union had asked for. Strike action was taken by public sector workers, determined to keep up with the wage increases of their counterparts in the private sector.

7. January 22, 1978 saw a "Day of Action" held by public sector unions, following several strikes of railwaymen that had already begun. With 1.5 million workers out, the day marked the largest general stoppage of work in the UK since the General Strike of 1926. About 140,000 people took part in the demonstration in London. Many workers remained on strike indefinitely. A strike of gravediggers occurred in Liverpool and andTameside in late January. After two weeks of strike action, the gravediggers accepted a 14% increase and returned to work. Waste collection workers were also on strike so that local councils were running out of space for storing waste. The rubbish attracted rats and, rather indistinguishably, the conservative media, who used pictures of the Square in an attempt to discredit the strikers. The waste collectors strike ended on February 21, when the workers accepted an 11% increase and an extra £1 a week with possible increases in the future.

8. « The phrase Winter of Discontent refers to the British winter of 1978-1979, when widespread strikes marked the largest stoppage of labour since the 1926 General Strike as the working classes and the Trade Unions rebelled against the Labour Party government ofJames Callaghan, the Prime Minister 1976-79. The period was marked by food shortages, power cuts, household refuse uncollected, and even the dead were left unburied. Twenty-nine million working days were lost to industrial action involving 4.6 million workers. Thirty years later, the memory of snow-bound Britain in the midst of industrial chaos remains deeply etched in the national psyche. It was the key factor in Labour’s defeat in the general election of 1979 and continued to resonate in British politics for many years after.”

9. 1979: Margaret Thatcher becomes PM And inflation is a major problem which cannot be cured without curbing public spending. If the Government overspends, and borrows or prints money to meet the deficit, then prices and interest rates will go on rising-there you have inflation—and the poor, and the pensioners, and the young home-buyers will all suffer. But there are some who think they have a right to contract out of the effects of inflation. If they are organised in a powerful union with enough muscle to impose their will on a suffering public. What madness it is, that winter after winter we have the great set-piece battles, in which the powerful unions do so much damage to the industries on which their members' living standards depend; the struggles for wage increases disregard output, profit or any other measure of success. They ignore the reality that there is an inescapable link between prosperity and production. Since 1979 began, scarcely a week has passed without some group calling for higher pay. Listening to the chorus of pay demands you might imagine that a one-hundred per cent pay rise for everyone in the country would solve all our economic problems. But we all know that the only result would be doubled prices. No one would have more food, more clothing, more anything. The key to prosperity lies not in higher pay but in higher output. In 1979 you have all heard endless discussions about pay. How often have you heard similar discussions about how to raise output? The reason why Britain is today the third poorest nation in the European Community has little to do with pay but it has everything to do with production. We hanker after a West[fo 8] German standard of output. The truth is very simple: West German pay plus British output per man equals inflation. And that is exactly what has been happening. The unions win pay awards their members have not earned. The company pays out increases it cannot afford. The prices to the customer go up. Government print the money to make it all possible and everyone congratulates them on their success as an honest broker, with or without beer and sandwiches at Number Ten. It has been happening for years. The result has been the most uncompetitive industry, the lowest economic growth rate and the highest rate of inflation in the industrialised world.  http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104147

10. Writetwodifferentaccounts of the « winter of discontent » In the midst of one of the harshest and coldestwintersBritian has everknown, exhaustedstrikers and picketers carry on with a fightthatprovesstrenuous. Since the government has betrayedthem, they have showedevengreaterdetermination to seetheir brave battle for decentwagesleading to a well-deservedvictory. Theytoosufferfrom the stoppages and disruption but brace for a new day of action expecting the support of the people. Whilemanycitizens do have to copewithfood-shortages, foul-smellinglitteredstreets and stalledvehicles, the relentlessstrikers, adamant to bring a teeteringgovernment to itsknees, are now planning a new day of action. More disruptions are thus to beexpected and the police force are once more on theirguards. Regardless of health and sanitaryhazards in the country, trade-unionists have marshalledtheirtroops to London. Anotherbleakdaywillcloudthiswinter of discontent.