It is a perfect and obvious analogy to the spate of industrial strife that brought down Jim Callaghan's Labour government, ushering in Margaret Thatcher's revolution, which was to irrevocably change the face of Britain. It was a watershed event which saw Britain's first woman prime minister doggedly set about dismantling the welfare state. But the winter of discontent - and the Thatcherism it spawned - was actually the culmination of economic woes which had plagued a minority Labour government some five years before it was eventually defeated by the Tories in 1979.
In 1975, with inflation at 26,9%, prime minister Harold Wilson had entered into a "social contract" with the unions in an effort to bring down inflation without increasing unemployment. The contract amounted to a voluntary incomes policy: unions would agree to suspend free collective bargaining in favour of pay increases set down by government. A year later Wilson resigned unexpectedly, handing the poisoned chalice to Callaghan, his foreign secretary.
Callaghan's rickety coalition government limped along, constantly stitching together tenuous truces with rebellious unions. With the value of the pound plummeting he sought help from the IMF, which in turn imposed tough conditions on the loan. It was too bitter a pill for the unions to swallow. Callaghan lost a no-confidence debate by one vote and called an election. Thatcher walked in and found the ground nicely prepared for her revolution: the unions had overreached themselves, and the public had had enough of it.
Callaghan had, in fact, foretold the coming of Thatcherism. Addressing the Labour party conference for the first time as prime minister in 1976, he had expressed his disillusionment with Labour's postwar commitment to the notion of full employment.
"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists. It only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy. Higher inflation was followed by higher unemployment."
The comrades were stunned. That was sacrilegious. The unions had helped found the party so it could fend for the working class, not betray them.
There are interesting parallels here. It is winter, of course. The unions, like the weather, are in a frosty, chilly mood. The trade union movement is taking on its ideological soulmates in government. Also, the ANC has a longstanding relationship with the Labour party and has been known to "borrow" some of Labour's policies. Our unions have modelled themselves on Trades Union Congress's affiliates.
But the ANC is not about to be defeated. The strike is not about a few percentages on a payslip. This is a Cosatu strike, not the unions'. It's initiated and co-ordinated from Cosatu House. Zwelinzima Vavi is playing for higher stakes. He's laying the ground for a Jacob Zuma presidency. Having raised Zuma from the dead, he's hoping for labour-friendly, Left-leaning economic policies to emerge at the ANC conference which Zuma, if elected, would then implement.
But that won't happen, even if Zuma were to win. The Left here has yet to discover, just as their British counterparts learnt almost 30 years ago, that the world has changed. No country is an island. International markets can be unremitting in their punishment of those who behave as though the Berlin wall were still intact.
Fortunately, the ANC got the message long before it even got into power.
e-mail: fmeditor@fm.co.za
