WHAT happens when a Labour government faces a big strike? We might soon find out as strikes are definitely back, and a Labour government probably will be.

There might be a pause in strikes when Labour is re-elected in 2024, but the pressure on wages driving current disputes isn’t going to disappear under Sir Keir.

I was given a huge file of Home Office papers on the 1970s Grunwick dispute that might give some clues.

The 1976-8 Grunwick strike was a cause celebre on the left. A largely Asian workforce in a north London factory went on strike supporting a colleague sacked for “working too slowly.” 

Grunwick processed photographs: in this pre-digital camera time, processing holiday snaps in factories and returning them by mail was big business.  

Grunwick “strikers in saris,” led by Jayaben Desai, were supported by thousands of other trade unionists at mass rallies and pickets.  

On the other side, influential hard-right group the National Association for Freedom backed Grunwick boss George Ward as he resisted the strikers. 

The dispute was a key part of the tumultuous social unrest of the 1970s. The final defeat of the strikers in 1978 helped usher in Margaret Thatcher’s victory.

Labour was in government, with Jim Callaghan as prime minister. The Home Office file shows that under a Labour government, the pressure for socialists and trade unionists to either back or drop a strike happened within the governing party. 

The right-wing press and the Tories said the pickets were violent and the strike hopeless. The left said the massive police reaction to the pickets was violent. 

This debate was then refracted within the government, with MPs backing the strikers, but ministers trying to find a way to damp the whole thing down.

Sometimes ministers just reflected the anti-strike rhetoric. The home secretary Merlyn Rees pressed education secretary Shirley Williams about her role in the Grunwick dispute. 

Williams was a “moderate,” but because she was sponsored by the union the Grunwick strikers joined, Apex, she went along to the strike. 

In October 1977 Rees wanted a “note of her involvement in the dispute” as he had been told Williams “had not condemned the violence at Grunwick.” 

Williams’s office supplied a copy of her Grunwick speech, from June, in which she had “saluted” the official pickets but called on people to “cool it” and said that the “fringe elements” supporting the strike were “counterproductive.”

There was back-and-forth within the Labour Party about who was to blame for picket-line violence. 

In July Rees had a long meeting with the left-wing Tribune Group — including Dennis Skinner. There were “protracted exchanges” where the MPs said police “behaved with unnecessary violence” that they had witnessed and asked for rights for the pickets to communicate with strikers.

Rees took the side of the police, arguing that it “was difficult to maintain any thesis about police brutality” and defended the police. The papers show that Rees and Callaghan did not question police reports which, unsurprisingly, said they did no wrong.

Ministers also tried to encourage those inside the unions who had cold feet about the strike. In July 1977 the minister of sport Denis Howell telephoned Rees “to explain to you the extent of difficulties Apex had recently run into.”

This was when “the official leadership of the union discovered to their considerable dismay that the strike committee, which Mr Howell described as having been infiltrated by Trotskyists, working in conjunction with Mr Dromey” had printed 10,000 leaflets calling for mass pickets — to the anger of the union leaders. 

“Mr Dromey” was Jack Dromey, who back then was the firebrand leader of Brent Trades Council, organising union solidarity for the Grunwick workers.

According to Howell, the Apex leadership (Roy Grantham) was considering “disbanding the strike committee, reducing strike pay from £30 to £12 and bringing the offenders before the union on disciplinary charges. 

“Mr Grantham was also going to speak to the TUC about Mr Dromey, since his position in the Brent Trades Council was something that fell within the TUC’s responsibilities.”

When ministers weren’t actively trying to undermine the strike, they tried to find ways to make it go away — a June 1977 10 Downing Street note says: “More generally it is the Prime Minister’s strong view that Mr Grantham (Apex) should not take up action that would have the effect of stepping up the dispute.”  

Callaghan wanted to warn the unions not to break the law, and to limit pickets. The note says: “The Prime Minister would like these views conveyed” to the “president of Apex as well as to others concerned.”

The Labour government tried to contain the strike, fearing disorder of the mass demonstrations and pickets. It wanted to force Grunwick management to accept some kind of compulsory arbitration. 

But Grunwick bosses simply refused. Instead of arbitration the government turned to a “court of inquiry” led by Lord Scarman. 

Privately, the employment secretary opposed the plan because “the court of inquiry could not itself compel agreement.” The court might sound grand, but could not force Grunwick bosses to agree  a compromise. However, ministers backed the court of inquiry in absence of other plans. 

The Home Office admitted “having set up the court of inquiry, we have no more devices left if the thing slips out of control.”

The Scarman inquiry recommended Grunwick recognise the union and reinstate the workers. Initially the government feared both Grunwick and the strikers would simply ignore the powerless inquiry. 

A note attached to the draft of the Scarman report says: “The overall drift of the report is in favour of the union, which may, I suppose, help the situation on the picket line initially. If however, Grunwick continue to be obstructive, the militants may try and force the issue.”

But despite their fears, ultimately, the court of inquiry worked for the government, but not the workers. The slowdown of union activity around the court of inquiry meant the momentum was broken. 

Support from other unions for Grunwick workers fizzled away. But Grunwick bosses ignored the findings. 

The Grunwick workers themselves held out until summer 1978, but lacking wider support, admitted defeat.