Crisis? What crisis?: The Callaghan government and the British ‘winter of discontent’

by John Shepherd

Over thirty years later, the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978–79 still resonates in British politics. On 22 January 1979, 1.5 million workers were on strike. Industrial unrest swept Britain in an Arctic winter. Militant shop stewards blocked medical supplies to hospitals; mountains of rubbish remained uncollected; striking road hauliers threatened to bring the country to a standstill; even the dead were left unburied. Within weeks, the beleaguered Callaghan Labour government fell from power. In the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, beginning eighteen years of unbroken Conservative rule.

Based on a wide range of newly available historical sources and key interviews, this full-length account breaks new ground, analysing the origins, character and impact of a turbulent period of industrial unrest. This important study will appeal to all those interested in contemporary history and British politics.

Genres: Politics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 2013

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as John Shepherd

Reviews

[David Civil · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Shepherd’s book is by far the best account of the strikes which engulfed Britain in the winter of 1978-1979, most readily remembered by the term ‘The Winter of Discontent’. This account provides a vast amount of detail, utilising press reports, political memoirs, and Cabinet papers, on individual strike action, ranging from the Ford Motor strike in September 1978 to the public sector National Day of Action in January 1979. Shepherd also includes chapters on the media, the Conservative Party strategy and the aftermath of the strikes. Throughout these chapters he highlights the contingency of the events which serves to undermine the Thatcherite mythology which portrays this period as the culmination of the inevitable breakdown of the Keynesian, post-war consensus. While Crisis? What Crisis? opens up new areas of research on this relatively unexamined winter, Shepherd provides a relatively top-down approach and the voices of ordinary citizens, trade union members, and political activists are ignored in favour of relatively elite actors. Despite this, by accurately portraying the strikes as a series of crises, which were not necessarily interconnected, Shepherd’s account provides a welcome antidote to historians, ranging from Dominic Sandbrook to Colin Hay, who portray the ‘Winter of Discontent’ as a single, climactic entity.