A Study Of The "Winter Of Discontent" In Britain 1978-1979

In the winter of 1978-1979,a series of large-scale and far-reaching strikes broke out in British society,which was historically called the "winter of discontent".The strikes have a long socio-economic background: more than thirty years after the war,Britain has pursued an economic policy with full employment as its goal and demand management as a means of ensuring the rapid recovery of the British economy over time.However,in the long run,it has caused the problems of wage and inflation rising alternately and the excessive expansion of trade union power and so on,all those problems is difficult to solve effectively in the two-party political environment of Britain.In the late seventies,under the leadership of the then Prime Minister Callaghan,the British government made decisions such as the enactment of the fourth-stage income policy and the postponement of the 1978 autumn General Election,which directly triggered the strike of Ford workers.The victory of the Ford workers' strike in November 1978 declared the fragility of government policies,exacerbated the income gap between the public and private sectors,marking the official outbreak of "winter of discontent".During the "winter of discontent",the strike wave gradually spread from the private sector to the public sector,affecting many industries such as oil transportation,road freight,health care,teachers,civil servants and so on.Its scale was second only to the 1926 general strike.There are three common points in the strikes across different industries: First,the strikes were initiated by the primary level shop stewards "bottomup" and were not planned and organized by the senior leadership of the trade unions.Second,the strikes were unofficial at the beginning,but with the continuous growth of time and scale,they are officially recognized by the union leaders.Third,affected by the picket action,a large number of workers who want to maintain normal work have to passively participate in the strike,so that the number of them is much higher than the number of active strikers.On March 28,1979,the Callaghan government was defeated in the parliamentary vote of no confidence.A series of strike movements in the "winter of discontent" gradually subsided,but its social impact did not stop.On May 3 of the same year,Thatcher seized the good opportunity brought by the "winter of discontent" to the Conservative Party and won the General Election.After nearly 11 years in power,Thatcher implemented policies of monetarism,anti-trade unions and privatization,and carried out drastic reforms in British society,which could be regarded as an important turning point in postwar British history.In order to win the elections continuously,the Conservative government and its media supporters also mythologized the "winter of discontent" through propaganda and described it as the complete bankruptcy of trade union movement and social democracy.Nowadays,every mention of the "winter of discontent" still reminds the British people of horrific scenes caused by large-scale strikes,such as the shortage of materials and energy,the mountain of street rubbish,the lack of access to medical treatment,and the difficulty of burying the deceased,which makes the "winter of discontent" as an enduring historical memory in British society.