Is Mick Lynch plotting the first general strike in nearly 100 years? Fears over mass coordinated action to cripple UK as RMT chief assembles 'war cabinet' of union barons... as Britain braces for another week of walkouts

There are fears union barons could be plotting the first general strike since 1926 when they meet at a 'war cabinet' later this week.

Some of the country's top union bosses, including Mick Lynch, will meet at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to plan their next move after weeks of crippling walkouts.

It will come just a day after they conduct talks with ministers amid ongoing pay disputes that have seen large parts of the country grind to a halt over the last year.

I am surprised the last general strike was in 1926. I thought there were general strikes during the 1970s. While the 1920s were roaring in the United States, the UK was dealing with the economic impact from the Great War. Part of the economic pressure was Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill re-establishing the gold standard at the pre-war rate. This caused deflationary pressure as Britain could not compete with the United States and other countries with the overvalued pound. The General Strike in 1926 was in response to employers trying to cut the nominal wages of the workers. One sees the same forces with the government and Central Bank trying to prevent nominal wage raises to keep up inflation. One result of the 1926 strike was the Conservatives losing the 1929 election to Labour.

From reading the piece, they seem to be carefully dancing around the cause of this - in large part, the decision to block Russian oil and gas and the effect it is having.

The rail workers struck for a couple of days, now the nurses, ambulance and bus drivers are going out.

Don’t worry chaps, we’ll have the Russkies on the run very shortly. Just a few more bits of kit, a little help from the exchequer to grease the skids, and nothing but blue skies.

My first job in HS was working the summer of 1974 at a car dealership that handled Alfa-Romeo, Saab, Volvo, Triumph and Subaru, as well as RV’s. As absolute lowest position on the org chart, I washed cars. prepped them for delivery, did light mechanical work, delivered cars, chauffeured customers to their homes or offices, picked up parts, did local dealer trades, etc.

I will always remember a transport truck pulling next to the dealership, full of Triumph TR-6’s. The driver would get them off the truck, I had to park them on the lot, temporarily, before driving them to the other location of the dealership, where Triumphs and RV’s were sold. The first one I got behind the wheel of, I released the parking brake and reached for the shifter and got a handful of nothing but the threaded metal end of the shifter – no shift knob had been installed. Then gradually I started to notice all the missing details in the car – where the radio was supposed to be was a hole in the dash with a wiring harness hanging out, etc. In the trunk were essentially a bucket of parts, the rest of the vehicle.

What was happening was that British Leyland Motors Corp. was having labor strife, but instead of calling a strike and not showing up, the workers were showing up but not completing the cars. They were being shipped in barely operable condition to dealers, who had to dedicate dealership mechanic’s time to completing assembly work not done in the UK.

In driving one TR-6 the three or four miles to the other dealership location, I had the throttle lock open in traffic. The brackets holding the throttle cable in position had not been screwed down and the cable came loose while driving. I was able to avoid having an accident, but it was close.

The dealership spent a ton of money finishing the assembly of those cars, more than the dealership would make in gross profit selling the vehicles. The end of Triumph was not far off.

It was an early lesson in the power of labor in the UK, and their ability to completely constrain, capture and cripple an industry. When I think of that lesson, I can feel the threaded shifter handle jamming in the palm of my hand, trying to drive that TR-6 onto the lot in 1974.

“From reading the piece, they seem to be carefully dancing around the cause of this - in large part, the decision to block Russian oil and gas and the effect it is having.”

Yep. Basically the unions see it as breaking their unwritten contract which was that their workers in which the workers would be paid, at least, enough to live on. But now, with energy prices through the roof (as in 2 to 5 times higher than 2 years ago) due to them joining in on ‘punishing’ Russia (still trying to figure out how that works), the unions, understandably, want some compensation.

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