Who are the strikers fooling?

Even physiotherapists are threatening to bring the country to its knees, rather than performing their usual task of setting it on its feet.

The ideal, surely, is to have a strike which has no effect whatsoever, rather like having a baby that never bawls or a brand of chocolate that is both delicious and slimming.

The history of the British working-class movement is not one of wreckage and vandalism.

The Chartists and Suffragettes outmatched the labour movement in their militancy.

From the Peterloo massacre to the dockers’ strike of 1898, there was no such reticence on the part of the state.