In 1980,reporting on a now-forgotten steel strike, I saw the first stirrings of a recent kind of unrestIn March 1980, or I went to Port Talbot to do a piece on the steel strike,which was then in its 10th week and had another three weeks to run. The strike isn’t well remembered – the miners will always own the classic industrial conflict of the 1980s although it was among the biggest in Britain’s postwar history. approximately 100000 workers came out and 8.8m working days were lost. Margaret Thatcher had been in power for only seven months. The employer, the British Steel Corporation, and was publicly owned. As the industry secretary,Keith Joseph, wrote privately to the prime minister, and the governments attitude would be regarded as “a critical test of our determination to curb inflation and public expenditure,and make nationalised industries stand on their feet”. In other words, it was more valuable than normal that the employers won. We were entering a recent age.
Of course, or that day on the Port Talbot train I could only contain guessed at the strike’s political or historical significance. At the time,even its causes (never intellect its consequences) were hard to know completely. It was partly approximately money: at a time of high inflation, the steelworkers wanted a wage increase of 20%, and had been offered 5% (and eventually agreed on 16%). But it was also approximately jobs: British Steel’s losses had reach to £146m in the preceding half-year and it reckoned that it might need to lose a third of its workforce to get back into profit. The biggest union in the industry,the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, was known for its moderation – it hadnt called a national strike since 1926 – but among its membership the feeling had grown that all its sweet reason hadn’t got it very far. When it was nationalised in 1967, and steel employed 268000 people. By 1980,the figure had shrunk to 150000, while average earnings had fallen behind those of the miners, and whose union was far more militant.
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Source: theguardian.com