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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Birmingham bin strike latest - now even the army is WFH. Don't panic! By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL Published: 20:27 EDT, 17 April 2025 | Updated: 20:27 EDT, 17 April 2025 e-mail View comments Reading the headlines about the Army being called in to deal with the Birmingham dustmen’s strike, the memories came flooding back. During the Winter of Discontent in 1978/79 I was the Industrial Correspondent of the Birmingham Evening Mail.
When I arrived in Britain’s Second City a year earlier, it was still just about recognisable as the Workshop Of The World. I used to find my way round by factories – or, rather, by picket lines, since half the workforce was on strike at any one time. Turn left at the blockade outside Fort Dunlop, past the pickets at the HP Sauce works, sharp right by the lorry drivers’ strike at Ansells Brewery, then straight on to the mass meeting at Longbridge.
When you get there, ask for Red Robbo. In Brum, they didn’t so much have a Winter of Discontent, more a Decade of Discontent. Mostly, this was confined to manufacturing, but by January 1979, workers in the public sector had joined in, too, as pay demands spiralled ever upwards.
Actually, I played a small walk-on part, having broken the exclusive story that the government was planning to slap a 5 per cent limit on pay rises to combat runaway, double-digit inflation . (My friend Terry Duffy, the no-nonsense, ex-Paratrooper engineers’ leader from Wolverhampton, let me in on the scoop, after he’d had beer and sandwiches with then Labour PM Jim Callaghan.) It proved to be my ticket to Fleet Street, but it also sparked the Winter of Discontent.
After Birmingham’s lorry drivers drove a juggernaut through the pay ceiling, car workers followed suit and soon everyone was in on the act. There was chaos across the country as public services ground to a halt. We’re not there yet, and if it happens will anyone notice? But an action-replay looms as Unite – what the old TGWU calls itself these days – threatens to take the Birmingham strike nationwide.
A mountain of rubbish blocks a street in Birmingham Once again, it’s a Labour Government up to its neck in overflowing binbags. Deputy Prime Minister Ginge Rayner finds herself in the firing line, despite being a former Unison official, bought and paid for by the union. They may bankroll Labour, but union members come first and they take no prisoners, regardless of political affiliation.
Unite’s regional secretary has already put the boot into Rayner for failing to force Birmingham’s Labour-run council to cave in to the strikers. Some of us saw this coming. The idea that a new Labour Government would usher in an idyllic era of industrial harmony, after the politically-motivated wave of strikes aimed at bringing down the Tories, was always for the birds.
Appeasement never works. It’s a sign of weakness. On the day after Labour’s landslide last summer I wrote here: ‘If you think strikes are bad now, wait until Ange Rayner repeals the Tories’ trades union laws .
. . ‘She won’t get any thanks from the unions, even though Labour will shovel excessive pay rises and four-day weeks in their direction.
‘The unions will just keep demanding more. Soon, we’ll be back to the industrial anarchy of the 1970s. Rubbish piled up on the streets of Soho due to industrial action by binmen in 1979, during the Winter of Discontent ‘Don’t forget it was Labour that brought you the Winter of Discontent, with the dead unburied and rubbish piled high in the streets.
’ Mystic Uncle Rich strikes again! Rachel From Complaints has paid off in spades everyone from the train drivers to junior doctors and still they’re not satisfied. Ginge Rayner is offering the unions the kind of sweetheart deal once satirised in Private Eye magazine in the 1970s as ‘All the Kingdoms of Heaven and Earth and the glory thereof’. Yet they are not showing an ounce of gratitude and are threatening more strikes.
A ‘Summer Of Discontent’ looms. You couldn’t make it up. Surkeir Starmer will have no more success talking them down than Sunny Jim Callaghan.
How long before rats as big as Bagpuss start turning up, chewing their way through our uncollected detritus, not just in Birmingham, but everywhere else? During the Winter of Discontent, the Government could rely on the Army to take up the slack, emptying dustbins and manning ambulances and Green Goddess fire engines. Now? Not so much. The Army has shrunk to its smallest strength since the Napoleonic Wars and Surkeir has already committed what’s left to a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Ukraine.
So, back to where we came in, I was surprised to read about the Army being seconded to deal with the Brum bin strike. This strike-busting initiative would appear to amount to little more than 'office-based' strategic advice On closer examination, those headlines didn’t quite stack up. Turns out there won’t be truckloads of squaddies lugging away the tonnes of rubbish.
This strike-busting initiative would appear to amount to little more than ‘office-based’ strategic advice from a surplus Sarn’t Major on the brink of retirement and a couple of Ruperts straight out of Sandhurst. And given the definition of an ‘office’ these days can stretch anywhere from munching Hobnobs at your kitchen table to taking a Zoom meeting on a beach in Bali, I don’t bank on the Armed Forces bringing about an early end to this insanitary – and indeed, insane – dispute. We’re not talking the Relief of Mafeking here or, come to that, the arrival of a fleet of Green Goddesses to hose down the streets of Moseley.
These days, it seems, even the Army is Working From Home. Don’t Panic! The felling of an ancient oak tree on the edge of a wood in Enfield, North London, has horrified environmentalists and made national news. As it happens, I have some knowledge of tree preservation regulations in Enfield.
When we bought our house almost 30 years ago, we inherited a number of listed Scotch pines in various states of health. Read More RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Soon everything in the shops will be behind bars - except the thieves themselves They’ve been inspected annually and respectable tree surgeons and arborists insist on consulting the local council before any remedial work. Over the years, we’ve lost a couple, with the inspectors’ permission.
But we still have five left, some held upright by industrial-strength tethers to stop them falling through our roof. Maintaining them has cost a tidy sum, but it’s been worth it, especially as the penalty for felling a tree illegally can run to £25,000. Elsewhere in the borough, however, some people are less meticulous.
Developers have cleared sites over a bank holiday weekend, when the council is shut. I shouldn’t be surprised to see a few more listed oaks disappear by the time Enfield Town Hall opens again on Tuesday. In the scheme of a multi-million pound development, 25 grand a tree is considered the cost of doing business.
Less scrupulous residents than us have been known to hire a team of ‘travellers’ with a chainsaw and hope that nobody notices. Still, I’m surprised that Enfield wasn’t informed about this centuries-old oak. Toby Carvery, which leased the land, says it has broken no law and the police insist it’s a civil matter.
The council is taking legal advice. My guess is that the oak, which overlooked a car park, was condemned after a super-cautious ‘risk assessment’ by insurers, or the firm’s elf’n’safety bods. Meanwhile, they’ve tied a yellow crime tape round the old oak tree .
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