Winter of Discontent

Term which was used to describe the strikes in Great Britain that occurred during the years 1978 and 1979. The expression was taken from the first soliloquy of the protagonist in William Shakespeare's drama Richard III and was frequently used by the British media to refer to the strikes.

Historical Background

In 1976, James Callaghan of the Labor party followed his predecessor Harold Wilson as prime minister. During his three-year governing period a lot of industrial unrest took place in Britain. In 1977, Callaghan had announced a limit to pay rises of five per cent, as an attempt to control inflation. This statement was the trigger for more aggressive, continuous strikes, affecting the private as well as the public sectors. During this period, the ongoing British disease, a term coined by foreign media to describe the bad economic situation in Great Britain since the end of the second world war, led to strikes and protests for better working conditions.

Before the Winter of Discontent began, trade unions in the private sector had already managed to receive higher pay rises than the official five per cent by going on strike, for example the workers from Ford Motors and Grunwick photographic works.

Course of Events

Many employees of the public sector started to use their power, after having watched people from the private sector achieve significant pay rises by the use of strikes. Since James Callaghan's government had cut public expenditures, the employees of the public sector felt eager to denounce their working and payment conditions.

In the following, the strikes of the public sector employees led to an intensification of the crisis. On January 22, an alliance of trade unions of the public sector had proclaimed a day of actions. On that day, nearly 1.5 million of people went on strike, which made history as the largest stoppage since the General Strike of 1926. Due to the strikes, many schools and airports stayed closed. In addition, mass demonstrations took place in the major cities of the country. Especially the strikes of the gravediggers and waste collectors made an impact, since the dead were not buried anymore and the streets filled up with waste which attracted rats. Continuing strikes of public sector employees, for example nurses, train and ambulance drivers added up to the dramatic situation.

The strikes officially ended on February 14, when a proposal of the government, after a long time of negotiation, had been agreed upon by the general council of the TUC, the national trade union centre. Afterwards, the strikes started to decline observably. As a result, most of the workers had achieved significant pay rises which exceeded the five per cent limit proposed by the Labor government. At the end of February 1979, most of the employees had resumed their regular work.

Political Impact

The actions of the Winter of Discontent had a negative influence on the Labour government. When formerly in 1978, the Labour government had had a lead in the public voting polls, the favor of the British people had changed a year later due to the crisis management of the government. Callaghan's decision to postpone a general election to the following year had disastrous results for the Labour party. Prime Minister James Callaghan who in official statements seemed to ignore the existence of a crisis, and his government were deselected in 1979.

The new Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had used the crisis and pictures of the strike for their election campaign. In the following, Margaret Thatcher restored the power of the government by restricting the rights of trade unions. The new laws made it more difficult to authorise a strike, which led in the long run to the lowest level of strikes in the last thirty years by 1983.

Sources

Lynch, Michael: Access to History: Britain 1945-2007. London: Hodder Education, 2008.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3067563.stm

http://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-winter-of-discontent

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/resources/union_meeting120311.html