The Long View on UK strikes: 1984–2024 in Historical Perspective

The defeat of the 1984–85 miners’ strike and the wave of anti-strike laws from 1980 have dominated the narrative on the downward trajectory of UK strikes since the election of the Conservative government in May 1979. These two central features of the last forty years have sucked much of the oxygen from discussion. They obscure the collapse of unofficial strikes in the 1980s, as a result of mass unemployment, industrial restructuring, and employers taking advantage of workers’ labour market weakness. Continuing deindustrialisation, and not the law, reduced the number of trade unionists and strikes in manufacturing to a fraction of their once dominant position in the 1970s. The tertiarisation of conflict (happening in all mature capitalist economies) saw UK strike activity shift to transport (especially rail) and postal workers, along with the essential public services, where one profession after another eventually embraced strikes. Eight interlinked statutes (during 1980–93 and 2016–23) targeting strikes did stop some and generally made striking more difficult. Yet a sharp spurt in inflation in 2022–23, after a decade of austerity and falling real wages, saw workers flock to the picket lines in large numbers, despite Conservative governments’ increasingly restrictive laws.