The people of Britain are only now discovering what they voted for last year. The postal workers have returned to duty, acknowledging total defeat after a six-week strike that not only exhausted the union’s funds but left it heavily in debt. At the beginning of the year, the electric power station workers staged a slowdown that cut off electricity altogether in different areas at different times. This slowdown was not ended by financial pressure, for the men were still drawing their wages. It was ended by public opinion. Power workers and their families were boycotted, some pubs refused to serve the men, some shops, their wives, and there were cases of assault, some of the victims being supervisory staff who were not slowing down, but who were working long hours to maintain service.
In both instances, the collapse of the workers was as sudden and complete as the collapse of Biafra. The general public was as startled as the militants. That a challenge by an important body of workers could be met head-on and crushed to the ground was something that was entirely new to all but the oldest. It could not have happened under other postwar governments, Labor or Tory. And government would have made sure it did not happen. A compromise settlement favorable to the men would have been forced on the employers.
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