You can often achieve a lot more by doing things a bit at a time rather than attempting
one bold and sweeping reform.
In the 1970s, for example, the trade unions had extraordinary legal privileges; strike votes were done on a show of hands at works meetings (usually late at night when everyone except the Trotskyists had gone to bed); there weren’t even secret ballots for union elections.
Edward Heath took the unions head on with his all-embracing Industrial Relations Act. It was a disaster: there were widespread demonstrations and strikes, and one of these confrontations forced him from office. Margaret Thatcher learnt from this and took things much more slowly. First, the government offered to pay for unions to hold postal strike ballots (which the ordinary, non-Trotskyite members rather liked). Then the same for union elections. Then secret ballots became compulsory.
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