Is it moral for ambulance workers to strike?

Confronted by the threat of an ambulance workers’ strike, the Health Secretary could not have been more forthright: ‘Those concerned must face up to the consequences of their actions. Lives are at stake. The ambulance men have put their case to me. It will not be strengthened by some of them adopting what will be seen as a callous attitude to the lives and health of their fellow men. Enough is enough. Only the innocent will suffer if health service workers allow their anger to run out of control.’

That statement was made in the Commons by David Ennals, a key member of the Labour Cabinet, at the height of the Winter of Discontent in January 1979, as a mood of militancy swept across the land. Today, more than 30 years later, the same spirit of chaos and turmoil now grips the public sector workforce, reflected in the growing rash of stoppages on so many fronts, from the Border Force to universities.