The RMT union is threatening strikes to bring the country to a halt. Such activities have a long history in the West. The Romans got there first in 494 bc when the plebs – that is, most of the workers – won a degree of political power hitherto denied them, by withdrawing their labour. Using this mass communal strategy in the interests of the majority, but sparingly, they achieved political parity in 287 bc.
The army too sometimes mutinied. This was dangerously different: the historian Tacitus saw it as a failure of leadership.
In ad 14 Augustus died, and the legions in Pannonia (the Hungary-Balkans area) feared their terms of service, harsh already, would become yet harsher. Tacitus gave Percennius, the ringleader of the mutiny (once ‘a rabble-rousing cheerleader for actors’) a model trade union speech.
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