Summary
The Winter of Discontent was a gruesome experience for the country, a dreadful failure by the Labour government and by those trade unionists (not all) and the few marshmallow ministers who inflicted the damage on their own movement and so gave Thatcher the opportunity to carry out her revolution and wreak revenge on the unions.
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Extract
Jim's Lessons for Gordon Brown
Commentators are today understandably drawing comparisons between Gordon Brown's current predicament and the experience of James Callaghan's government, especially with reference to the "Winter of Discontent" in 1978-79. Having served with Callaghan in No 1 o as head of his policy unit (as I did previously under Harold Wilson), I agree that there are some parallels.
Between 1976 and 1979 we had, as now, a new nonconformist prime minister who was politically very experienced, a strong party man who was a former chancellor of the exchequer and had succeeded a brilliant, if controversial predecessor who had won several general elections. Callaghan, like Brown, inherited the tail end of a series of Labour governments, by which time the electorate and the media were getting tired of Labour and ready for a change. Also like Brown, he was handed the premiership ...See the full content of this document
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