The lessons from history for Keir Starmer over strike action

Strikes, when they begin to hurt the general public, are usually an obstacle to Labour winning power, argues Sean O’Grady

Stamer & Co will be blamed for hard-working commuters failing to get to their vital work, students missing exams, aspirational types missing interviews and all the rest of it (PA Wire)

Sadly, there is no proper job description for leader of the Labour Party, still less an operations manual for how to go about making a success of this most difficult of roles. This is partly because some of the biggest problems are virtually insoluble. Not the least of these is what to say and do during a high-profile industrial action.

The current rail dispute is a perfect example. If Keir Starmer and his team turn up on the picket line, or even display much sympathy for the rail workers’ cause, then they’re labelled as militants and Marxists by the Tories. Stamer & Co will be blamed for hard-working commuters failing to get to their vital work, students missing exams, aspirational types missing interviews and all the rest of it.

The likes of Grant Shapps claim to be “on your side”, whereas, on those terms, Starmer would be helping the unions grind Britain to a halt, hold it to ransom and make the nation impossible to govern. No claim will be too outlandish; no fresh anti-union legislation too draconian because the RMT went on strike for a day. The fact that Labour still receives much of its funding from contributions by trade unionists will be merrily misrepresented.

On the other hand, if Starmer continues to tell his shadow ministers not to be seen on picket lines or tweet explicit support, it risks rebellions and having to discipline those who defy him – as in the case of Sam Tarry. The decision to sack the frontbencher was made somewhat easier for Starmer because the RMT is no longer affiliated to the Labour Party, and because Tarry was, even by shadow minister standards, somewhat obscure. Thus far, most of Starmer’s shadow cabinet have held the line.

Ironically, the Tories’ successive “anti-union” laws passed since 1979 make the opposition’s life a little easier. Strikes must now be approved by a substantial margin through a secret postal ballot, and employers receive four weeks’ notice of action – so they can be better prepared. Social security benefits for strikers are long gone, as is secondary picketing and action. So strikes don’t have the same terror for the nation as they had in the past. When they did they presented Labour leaders with much more trouble.

The most painful of choices had to be made by Neil Kinnock during the long, heroic and tragic miners’ strike of 1984-85. Without a proper national pit head ballot, the strike lacked a degree of democratic legitimacy, and the Thatcher government treated the coal workers as virtual revolutionaries and traitors – “the enemy within” as she notoriously named them. Inevitably, Kinnock sat on the fence as the conflict drew to its inevitable miserable conclusion, and faced accusations of betrayal by the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, who made no secret of the fact that he’d have liked to have seen the Conservative government collapse (as it did in the previous dispute, in 1973-74). The episode did Labour and Kinnock no favours; many Labour MPs gave public support to Scargill, and the Labour movement was badly split.

Something similar occurred, on a smaller but symbolic scale, in the Grunwick dispute of 1977 when workers at the Grunwick photo processing plant in London struck for union recognition and better conditions. It was a bitter dispute, and became a national cause celebre, because it featured a small business, mass picketing, and secondary action by postal workers who refused to deliver Her Majesty’s mail. Tories and libertarians went to court; Labour MPs and trade unionists turned up on the picket line, including some members of Labour PM James Callahan’s cabinet.

As ever, the Grunwick strike left Labour divided and not entirely better off electorally; but it was nothing compared to the infamous “Winter of Discontent” across 1978-79, when widespread industrial action by car workers, ambulance drivers, tanker drivers, bakers, gravediggers and many others gave the impression that the unions had made the country ungovernable, and Labour no longer able to claim that only it could deal with the unions. When industrial action causes such widespread disruption, public sympathy for low-paid workers soon evaporates in many quarters. As Britain faces a “summer of discontent” in 2022, trade unionists would perhaps be wise not to push their luck and repeat the mistakes of a more distant past.

Indeed, the Labour Party’s parliamentary and industrial wings have been in conflict almost as soon as the unions decided to set up their own political party to further their interests. Even during the general strike of 1926 and the industrial tumult of the Edwardian era, there were tensions.

The lessons of history would seem to be that the interests of working people and their unions are best pursued by having any kind of Labour government in power, no matter how useless or “right wing”; and that strikes, when they begin to hurt the general public, are usually an obstacle to Labour winning power. Only in the dark, cold winter of 1973-74, when Ted Heath made a series of tactical errors to deal with a severe energy crisis – culminating in calling a winter general election during growing civil chaos – has strike action actually brought down a Tory prime minister. It's not a happy precedent, in any case.