Kevin Maguire - As I please

AFTER a spring of discontent comes the summer of discontent that will be followed by an autumn of discontent then a winter of discontent before it starts all over again in 2009 with another spring of discontent. The media replays the so-called winter of discontent – the spurt of strikes that helped sign the death warrant of James Callaghan’s Labour Government close on 30 years ago – with a regularity that would earn whoever coined the term a small fortune if he or she had copyrighted one of the most over-used phrases, in its various seasonal guises, in the industrial-political lexicon. I plead guilty to using it occasionally myself, although not with the metronomic frequency of Wapping, the Daily Mail and even The Guardian where scribblers predict a surge of industrial action at the hint of a ballot, constantly readying photographers to capture apocalyptic scenes of burning braziers and pickets waving placards asking motorists (if they can afford the petrol) to toot support as they drive by.

Council workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were, at the time of writing, preparing a two-day strike in July after rejecting a paltry 2.45 per cent offer when 250,000 local authority workers – the bulk of them women– earn under £6.50 an hour. Walkouts by teachers, civil servants and lecturers in April pushed up the number of days missed at work due to industrial action during the previous 12 months to 1.1 million, triggering doom-laden reports from commentators turning sepia as they excitedly saw a return of widespread strife coming over the horizon.

Well, sorry to rain on this parade, but in the 1980s strikes claimed an average 7.2 million working days a year. In the 1970s, it was some 12.9 million days. In 1979, which included the fag end of the Callaghan era, the total was 29 million – although the bulk was during Margaret Thatcher’s early reign when engineering workers downed tools.

Official statistics record the upturn of the past few months, but not as much as you might think by listening to the BBC or reading some of the public prints. BBC reports all morning in the lead-up to a recent Unison ballot result in the National Health Service clearly anticipated a “Yes” vote in a pay dispute that embarrassingly for Auntie produces a “No” verdict at lunchtime. Similarly a Times warning of general mayhem was undermined the day it appeared when health unions agreed a three-year deal. Hey ho.

All power to striking Shell tanker drivers, who proved solidarity pays with 14 per cent over two years, and the Grangemouth oil refinery workers in defeating private in-equity pirates plotting to close their final-salary pension scheme. A couple of important, private sector victories chalked up by Unite there.

Yet parallels between Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown as premiers who moved into Number 10 without first winning a general election before they were swamped by strikes are promoted by the Conservatives (and some on the Left) as a win-win story.

Brown takes a hit as the country is depicted as going to the dogs while he is in power. But the Tories would use the strikes as a licence to outlaw industrial action, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne giving the right-wing game away when he declared measures were required to stop trade unions striking at the “drop of a hat”. No bright spark despite his expensive private education, Boy George is evidently ignorant of the legal chains that leave Britain’s employment laws – in the proud boast of Tony Blair – the most restrictive in the industrialised world.

The significance of the present unrest is less in the strikes and more in what they reflect: a summer of political discontent sapping support that could prove as fatal to Brown as industrial action was to Callaghan. Workers aren’t striking in mass numbers, but they are abandoning Labour in droves – particularly workers in public services, who are the party’s bedrock. The union conference season was dominated by complaints – and complaints with an added edge this year: about below-inflation pay rises, job losses and the threat of privatisation. To vote Tory would be to cut off the nose to spite the face in the public services. Pensions would be the first target of David Cameron, with job cuts certain to be savage. However, the disillusionment with Labour is real and as potentially toxic as Callaghan’s failed 5 per cent pay policy.

When Callaghan left them all waiting at the church, he boxed himself in and ran out of road six months later. The unions were left waiting for Gordo last September, but he has approaching two years to sort out the mess. And unless the discontent among natural supporters is turned into something resembling contentment, it is likely to be a grim night for the Labour Party in May or June 2010.

The Prime Minister should spend the summer sketching an employee-friendly speech for September’s TUC Congress in Brighton. To have a chance at the next general election requires Labour to be bold and radical, to champion a progressive left agenda rooted in fairness and social justice. Brown needs to woo his old friends or their discontent will write his political obituary – strikes or no strikes.