I started work in 1961 and have worked continuously until recent semi retirement. I will also feel free to mention the humiliation of the Greek style bail out under Callaghan's Labour Government and the Winter of Discontent with coffins piled up in warehouses and parks full of rat infested rubbish and the failure to answer 999 calls.

I witnessed the greedy selfish unions ruining the country which was by 1979 a basket case. These undemocratic unions were run by short sighted idiots like Red Robbo through various Scottish ones to that twerp Scargill. History will prove these intransigent upstarts bare the real guilt for so many job losses.

But rather like Churchill who saved us from peril in time of War thank goodness we had Mrs Thatcher who saved us from peril in 1979. Not only that but she played a major role in the defeat of communism and freedom for the peoples of so many Eastern countries.

If you were an illegal flying picket you certainly didn't work the whole year. You were skiving or on strike. What a sad thing to boast about! I now understand why Mrs Thatcher's victorys over the bad guys has left you so bitter and twisted.

So Mrs Thatcher did not kill of British manufacturing did she?

Governments ill-advisedly had been propping up failed private business by nationalising them to avoid mass unemployment. But it was just a wasteful use of resources and wholly unsustainable. when you look back it is frankly farcical that British Leyland (and, although not manufacruring) BRS were supported by public money. What thanks did the government public get? Unions always striking because governments had signalled they were too big too fail. All nationalisation of these dead ducks did was prolong the agony and tie up resources preventing the evolution of new more viable businesses.

As I said, Mrs Thatcher did not destroy British manufacturing - certain sectors did well and grew, others failed because they produced obsolete goods, poor goods or goods too expensively.

I am unclear at the point you are making. In the context of "Thather destroying manufacturing" the argument seems we should have propped up shambolic companies that produced stuff that would not sell because of employment. Foreign owned companies provide employment at less cost to us. They produce cars that people want too.

I am unclear at the point you are making. In the context of "Thather destroying manufacturing" the argument seems we should have propped up shambolic companies that produced stuff that would not sell because of employment. Foreign owned companies provide employment at less cost to us. They produce cars that people want too.

So this has turned into a massive bun fight over her.
I'm sure it what she would have wanted as she liked a good scrap.

I did nothing illegal, secondary picketing wasn't unlawful in 1979. During the January 1979 strike I was putting in 16 hour shifts: eight hours organising at Bevin House, Hull and eight hours on the cobbles, preventing scab drivers from trying to undermine the principles of the strike.

I was the shop steward in our haulage company and because I was the only one who didn't have children, I was the only one to work between Christmas and New Year. When I got back to the yard on 30 December 1978, I noticed that all of the other trucks had been de-licensed. A few phone calls confirmed that all the other companies had done the same. The employers knew that our mass-meeting on 2 January 1979 would result in an immediate strike vote and sought to minimise their costs. Can't blame them for that.

After the strike was called I was co-opted onto the strike committee and our MD was on the employers' committee. We spoke most days on how things were going and even devised a way of bringing the dispute to an early end. Unfortunately most of the employers refused to even consider the resolution. During the time of the strike I proposed we allow any trucks carrying food (human and animal) be allowed free movement, this was approved by the rest of the strike committee, similarly those companies engaged in fuel supplies (coal, LPG & oil) were also given dispensation. The flying pickets were needed because too many unscrupulous companies and the scab-labour drivers they employed tried to use the dispensations to engage in general haulage. Quite simply, if they'd played by the agreed rules, there'd have been no need for flying pickets.

We finally settled for our full demand, three weeks after the dispute could've been resolved if it wasn't for the initial intransigence of the employers. They were the ones who caused the protraction and in the end paid a very expensive price. It's easy to lay the blame for all this country's previous labour problems at the feet of the workers. It's made even easier when an established media tend to present only one side of the story but the fact that they are esteablished means they are an integral part of the establishment and it is their best interests to portray the "plebs" as the problem.

German and French labour forces have always been heavily unionised, the difference between their industries and ours can mostly be placed at the feet of the management styles. Continental companies have always seen their workers as an asset, most British companies saw them as a cost-base at best, usually as a liability.

Post WW2 we helped rebuild Germany & Japan and both countries actively embraced the industrial management principles of W Edwards Deming, what a great pity our own industrial magnates refused to adopt the same principles here.

I'm still waiting for evidence of the power cuts and water & gas shortages prior to Thatcher BTW

There is no inconsistency here, not sure how you equate running huge loss making industries to participation in social projects.

So you agree with my post then ?

Scab, black-leg or strike-breaker, are not emotive, they are desriptive of the actions of non-union labour who otherwise would have been involved in agricultural haulage, taking an opportunity to profit at the expense of those who had withdrawn their labour in order to improve their working conditions. The fact that the scabs would also have ultimately benefited from any improvements in pay and conditions made it all the more unpaletable.

The vast majority of drivers were in the main trades unions: TGWU, URTU, USDAW; most of the non-unionised (and some unionised) drivers had been iven dispensations to engage in vital supplies, they and their employers chose to take advantage of the strike by engaging in general haulage, often by using amateur subterfuge. I remember driving a minibus full of pickets to a local factory after an attempted strike-break. When we arrived we found a truck with an animal feed dispensation sticker in the windscreen, his load was fully sheeted and hay could be seen at the bottom edges of the sheet. He'd glued hay to the chock rails, hoping we wouldn't question why a company like Smith & Nephew would need a delivery of animal feed

I've crossed picket lines, usually because i'm happy with my pay and conditions, if i don't agree with those on strike why penalize myself?
You'd say i was the one being selfish but personally i thought they were the ones being greedy.
I was in an industry that thought 28k a year wasn't enough to live on and an 'insult' and wanted 30k. Like the extra £38 a week was a way of stopping being insulted.
Scabs might undermine your strike but if they don't agree with your opinions or politics who are you to force it on them?

I only ever had experience of working in one unionised industry, electrical contracting in the 1970s where every qualified electrician was a member of the EEPTU, it being virtually compulsory especially if you wanted to work on larger projects.

From memory they were a "mild" union in that we didn't have any strikes for the ten years I was in that trade and annual pay increases were simply agreed with the employers trade organisation, the ECA and others, from memory Frank Chapple was considered to be a moderate leader and from inside the trade he certainly kept a level playing field - reading a quick resume of his union in Wiki its obvious that he ruffled a few feathers in the TUC with his policy of single union agreements and they eventually evicted the EEPTU from the TUC

The only thing that ever caused us problems as employers was the strict dogma of no bonus payments on building sites, there were two rates for the two grades of electricians and they were considered to be the rate for the job, overtime rates were pre-agreed and that was that.

Of course in the real world both employers and employees would apply bonus schemes to contracts, we did it all the time, it was actually my job to survey the sites and work out the bonus targets for each section of work, and then pay them when complete within the time allotted - all of this was strictly against the union code and we would have had strikes called if they had found out, truth is that no-one told the union because it benefited everyone, our electricians earned the bonus on top of their standard rates for completing work quicker than estimated, and the company made more profit from doing so - we only ever had one very strong union electrician and he and I would spend hours sitting on drums of cable discussing his political views which rested somewhere to the left of Marx until eventually he'd look at his watch and declare that he'd better get on because he was on a good bonus run this week and he'd lost two hours already gabbing to me.

And THATS where I learned of the power of money over principal

Boasting about being a scab makes you look like a complete w@nker.

Without trades unions most firms would be paying subsistence wages for working in horrendous conditions. Improvements to pay and conditions that have benefited the workforce have rarely,if ever, been instigated by employers. Collective bargaining also suits many large employers because of its simplicity. I know you will argue that all of that is in the past and there is now no need for unions but I would counter that with asking you to look at what this government wants to do to the national labour force.

Cameron is busily stamping his feet for reform of the EU and repatriation of powers back to the UK. Most of what he wants to exercise greater control over is labour law, basically he wants to reduce or remove the safeguards that have been achieved over years of struggle. Thatcher's Right to Buy and the big bang had nothing to do with empowering the individual, it was all about creating a workforce of compliant wage-slaves. By shifting the emphasis from savings to ever-increasing personal debt, she achieved this without most people noticing.

I'm not surprised that you've never been a member of a trade union but while you've been enjoying a pay freeze (a cut effectively), has the same happened to the executives of your orgnisation or their shareholders? If I was ever in a situation where non-union labour decided to cross a picket line, there's little I could do about it, apart from ignore them, on a personal level, afterwards.