THIRTY years after Britain's notorious winter of discontent, it has become clear that the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government not only ended a long period of Labour rule but also defeated the Left's attempt, led from the trade unions, to transfigure British parliamentary democracy into a form of Soviet state. The leading figure in this story was the general secretary of Britain's largest union, the Transport and General Workers Union, and chairman of the Trades Union Congress's international committee, Jack Jones. In 1977, more than half the respondents to a Gallup poll named him the most powerful man in...