Strike! For every worker's God-given right to earnings above the national average.
Jeremy
You were obviously around pre-Maggie, then!
And to think it escaped all those guys... but no, that's unfair. I can give you a personal example of industrial action. Before I became a photographer, I started an apprenticeship in engineering. Then in '60, just as I was about to get married, there was a movement set up to strike on the Clyde. There were several hundred apprentices in that company with me, and one lunchtime they held a meeting headed (to say chaired would be an exaggeration) by three or four of them. Like dead men walking, all but perhaps a dozen of us decided to 'go out in sympathy'. Holy shit! I was about to get married, was earning hardly a penny and they expected me to stop earning even
that! The result was interesting: going into work during the strike was a game of stealth; the post-strike consequences were predictable: those of us who had refused to play silly games were ostracised, something that actuall served to boost my interest in self-employment; there's nothing like learning to think for one's self and leaving herds alone.
So, really, those three or four leaders were blessed with the same magic as Bin: they could motivate. Pity that, for the followers, it was directed badly.
Rob C
