The Lion in Winter

Abstract

These are times that try men's Anglophilia. Britain is in the midst of a largely self-made energy crisis, owing very little to the Arab oil cutbacks. The threat of massive unemployment, the lost production, the cold and darkness as winter goes on is largely a part of Britain's continuing saga of bloody-minded industrial relations. But while many of the elements here are, at the moment, peculiarly British, there is reason to fear a repetition of events like these elsewhere and, eventually, globally.The immediate problem is a threat to the nation's coal and electricity supplies due to “industrial action” by the coal miners and railroad engineers. One says industrial action because the “actions” are not strikes but yet have effects almost as severe. Perhaps because they were so long excluded from effective political power, British working men developed over the decades the art of industrial action to a refinement unsurpassed anywhere.