ABSTRACT
In the last decade of the twentieth century myths about the role of trade unions in the preceding post-war era were extended and lodged themselves deeper in public consciousness. The common sense of Thatcherism had long held the 1950s to be the locust years of lost opportunity in which Conserva tive adm inistrations embraced social democracy and legitim ized and stimulated collectivism and union power in ways inimical to the economic and political health of the nation. The 1960s and 1970s were depicted as a period of hedonism, indiscipline, appeasement. Edward Heath’s ‘U-turn’ in 1971-2, his subsequent succumbing to the miners in 1974 and the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-9 were foundation legends of the new Conservatism. As the 1990s developed, Labour Party leaders began to subscribe to similar readings of history, signalling their own adaptation to neo-liberalism. Fi nally union leaders, traditionally renowned for celebratory accounts of labour’s past, nailed their colours to the same mast. The ‘magnificent jour ney’, it seemed, had crashed into the buffers in 1979. A completely new beginning was necessary and timely.
