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The lion and the ostrich : Comments
By Rafe Champion, published 29/1/2008The mentality of the workers and the toffs made Britain the sick nation of Europe after World War II.
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Just their stupidity, and failure to see what was productive and what was self-destructive.
They had a job to do, and performed it increasingly poorly.
There were two main reasons why Maggie Thatcher was able to roll the Unions when her turn came. One was the significantly increased prosperity of the seventies over the fifties, and the other was the appalling decisions made by the Unions on which battles to fight and which to walk away from.
Because of the former, Maggie was able to use the latter to drive a wedge between them and their natural constituency, and by extension to lay the blame for the public discomfort caused by miners' strikes etc. squarely at the feet of the Unions.
In the background was of course the generic Union battle for relevancy among an increasingly comfortable workforce. Quite simply, their number one rationale - to protect the weak, and those unable to help themselves - was losing impact.