Skip to main content
Has the time come to organise a general strike?
The government’s response to the cost-of-living crisis is nothing short of class war. Workers can’t be expected to take these attacks lying down, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC
picket

IN PART one of this series in yesterday’s Morning Star, I argued that the fight of those on strike this summer and autumn, workers and unions who still have the right to bargain collectively, fight for the whole working class. 

That right covered 85 per cent of workers in the 1970s. Now it’s less than 25 per cent.

From the history of the 1970s, we should take something else. In the summer of 1972, 50 years ago, five dockers were imprisoned in Pentonville for picketing in defiance of a court order. 

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Morning Star call for advertising
More from this author
New Deal 27.03.25
Features / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
Falling short of what was promised: many of the new rights in the Employment Rights Bill have defects or escape loopholes that all need addressing, writes LORD JOHN HENDY KC
8orgreave
Features / 19 March 2024
19 March 2024
The Star publishes the Karl Marx Graveside Oration delivered by Lord JOHN HENDY KC at Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, on behalf of the Marx Memorial Library
Police officers march through a mining town
Miners' Strike 40th Anniversary / 6 March 2024
6 March 2024
LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s
Hunger march
Features / 18 August 2022
18 August 2022
It’s the steady erosion of collective bargaining over a number of years that has led workers’ pay to fall, while employers’ profits continue to rise, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC in the first of a two-part article series
Similar stories
New Deal 27.03.25
Features / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
Falling short of what was promised: many of the new rights in the Employment Rights Bill have defects or escape loopholes that all need addressing, writes LORD JOHN HENDY KC
Keir Starmer at Liverpool
Features / 11 October 2024
11 October 2024
Labour’s long-awaited Employment Rights Bill does not do nearly enough to remove the restraints on trade unions or to give them the powers they need to make a significant difference to the lives of the millions of workers, write KEITH EWING and Lord JOHN HENDY KC
picket
Features / 17 July 2024
17 July 2024
Professor Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC examine the new deal for workers outlined in the King's Speech and what should follow it
Mick Whelan and Dave Calfe
Features / 20 May 2024
20 May 2024
MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, writes for the Morning Star on the eve of his union’s annual conference in Manchester from Monday 20 to Friday May 24