Left out
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-03-03Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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But several factors were left out of the Tories' calculations. The long history of deep class collaboration to which the water industry had been accustomed, produced some paradoxical results. If an advantage of this for the Tories was a hardly-disguised lack of appetite for the strike from the national union officials, many of the National Water Counci representatives showed almost equal distaste at being cast as strikebreakers in the front line of the government's offensive.
An indication of the atmosphere which had existed between the trade union. leaders and the employers can be gauged from the background of two of the leading National Water Council figures. Chief negotiator Len Hill is a former ASLEF member, while industrial relations boss Jim Dickens is a former Labour MP.
Though, as we saw last year with similarly soft' management in the public sector with Parker and the Rail Board, the transformátion can be made, time after time DoE minister King had to embarrassingly intervene to prop the employers up.
The other, and far more decisive, ommision from Thatcher's equation was ar appreciation of the deterIn the case of the ASLEF strike last summer, even under the most intense pressure from the employers and the media. Their defeats have in no case been due to a lack of willingness to fight among the workers. On the contrary, had the membership's resolve been even halfway matched by that of the trade union leaders the fate of the Tory government would have been settled long ago.
In this case, however, it is true to say that few could have anticipated the ment ministers and media exploited to whip up reac- NALGO members to do tion against the strikers, only their 'normal work' did there was little evidence of animosity towards them from the working class, the bosses. reflecting broad support for what was seen generally as an anti-Tory fight. A few middle-class cranks did respond to Lord Denning's free legal advice on do-ityourself strikebreaking.
After a few days it became apparent that the Tories and the employers a predictable response. had done their homework before the strike began. For a whole period, going back