To understand what’s really going on with the latest British Medical Association strike threat – it is currently balloting 50,000 doctors over a putative six-month strike in support of a 29 per cent pay claim for ‘resident’ (formerly called junior) doctors – it’s instructive to look at what happened to Liverpool City Council in the 1980s.
The local Labour party had effectively been taken over by Militant entryists, who then exerted de facto control of the council. One of their aims was financial: they argued that cuts to the Rate Support Grant meant that £30 million had been ‘stolen’ from Liverpool by the government. But they also had a broader political aim: they saw conflict with the government as an end in itself.
The parallel with the BMA is far from exact; before Militant, the local Liverpool Labour party was perfectly normal and respectable. The BMA, on the other hand, has always been a byword for trade union militancy so over-the-top that it makes the rail unions seem timid in comparison.
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