Strike action in the moral maze
As a "summer of discontent" looms in Britain, is such disruption ever justifiable?
On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, my colleagues and I tackled the morality of strike action.
This week, Britain’s railway system all but ground to a halt as the biggest strikes in 30 years left only a fraction of rail services running. Threats of other strike action are now being made by a slew of different public sector workers. It’s ominously reminiscent of the period more than four decades ago, when the prevalence of strikes and the perception that Britain had become ungovernable in a “winter of discontent” led to the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the curbing of trades union power.
The right to withdraw one’s labour is seen by many as fundamental to a free society. But is a strike morally acceptable if it causes widespread misery or severely damages the economy, or if lives are lost as a result?
My co-panellists were Matthew Taylor, Mona Siddiqui and Giles Fraser. Our witnesses were Paul Nowak, deputy general secretary of the Trades Union Congress; journalist and commentator Caroline Farrow; Dr Sam Fowles, director of the Institute for Constitutional Research and a lecturer in public law at Oxford university; and Benjamin Loughnane of the Bow Group.
You can listen to the programme on the BBC website here.
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