The truth about Britain’s entitled strikers

Striking was part of my childhood. One of my first memories is of walking through Middlesbrough town centre and seeing people with ‘Coal Not Dole’ badges, holding buckets and asking us to ‘Dig Deep for the Miners’. Long before I left primary school, I knew what it meant to be a ‘scab’ and why it was important never to cross a picket line. I backed the men who looked like my dad, men who worked hard but needed more money for their families, over the bosses that wanted to keep them poor.

The world has moved on but the class divide continues and I have not changed sides. At the same time, I am not foolish enough to think that today’s strikes by junior doctors, teachers, nurses and university lecturers are of a piece with the mass walkouts of the 1980s. The demand for higher wages is still there, of course, as are the ballots, picket lines and placards.