The unions are losing their power

The rail unions have announced further strikes for December and January. Nurses have already voted to strike for the first time in over a century. Now university lecturers, postal workers and Scottish teachers have joined in. So are we headed for a second Winter of Discontent – emulating the last months of the Callaghan government in 1979, when the rubbish piled up in Leicester Square and the dead went unburied?

Things would have to get a whole lot worse before we get anywhere close to matching that grim season. In 1979, the number of days lost to strikes reached a post-war peak, at 29.5 million. Last time the unions threatened a national strike, in response to the coalition cuts in 2011 the figure was 1.4 million. But even 1979 looks mild compared with what went before. In 1926, the year of the general strike, a whacking 162.2 million days were lost to strikes.