If I may say so that seems to be a very biased account of what happened, probably written by a Thatcherite.

Factually it looks correct, its the facts it leaves out that tell the whole story though. The social contract with the 1974 Labour government WAS being abided by the unions, but it WASN'T helping inflation to come down as had been its purpose. So the workforce was effectively taking a pay cut year on year to try and reduce inflation whilst the prices continued to go up (who do you think was therefore benefitting from the extra cash ?)

The first people to break the social contract were the TGWU workers at Ford, Ford very quickly offered a pay rise way above the level of the social contract because they'd had a very good year trading and surplus cash (probably from all that inflation). After that, the gloves were off and everyone asked the question (rightfully IMO) why should I burden the responsibility of lowering inflation when nobody else is ?

I have heard stories of bully boy tactics on the shopfloor by shop stewards and leaders and I think that's where a lot of the animosity towards the unions from people who worked at the time comes from. There is no excuse for that of course and perhaps the unions did need the shock of a real adversary to face to reel them in, but she did go way too far to achieve it, so far in fact the country is still today feeling the ongoing effects of it.

But again there are two sides to every story, for every decent hard working chap that was bullied by the unions, there was a p1ss taking chancer that happily shyt on everyone else for his/her own ends. Take the example I heard from some old boy on Radio Merseyside yesterday who was a fitter at Camell Lairds and reminisced how the unions got an equal pay deal in for all workers so that he could benefit from being paid the same rate as others who's skills had previously been valued higher......then along came the three day week, and whilst his colleagues were struggling on low wages, he and his mate worked out they could volunteer for a certain shift pattern that with overtime rates meant he could get paid more for working 30 hours than he'd previously been paid for working 45 hours. Very enterprising you might say and good luck to him.....except he sort for all those months of struggle to keep his little scam to himself whilst his colleagues struggled and told no-one else of the loophole in the company's pay structure in case it meant he couldn't benefit from it anymore himself.......unsurprisingly this selfish, lowlife TWAT was also on the radio to espouse the merits of Thatcher as PM.