The Carpathia isn’t coming to rescue this government still swimming in the mire, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
PEOPLE ask me: “Hey, grey-haired old 1980s guy. What happened in the ’80s?”
“Was it,” they persist, “all ra-ra skirts and synthesisers? Or long faces and long coats and Joy Division. Or loadsamoney and massive brick mobile phones?”
And I say: “Yes, of course it was.” Although to be honest I never saw an actual mobile phone in the ’80s. It was more about using phone boxes because not everyone had a phone in their house, let alone in their hand.
A past confrontation permanently shaped the methods the state will use to protect employers against any claims by their employees, writes MATT WRACK, but unions are readying to face the challenge
Four decades on, the Wapping dispute stands as both a heroic act of resistance and a decisive moment in the long campaign to break trade union power. Lord JOHN HENDY KC looks back on the events of 1986
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today



