After he wisely cautioned the government against further trade union legislation a few years ago, Norman Tebbit changed his tune in the Telegraph earlier this week. In a piece which summoned up the ghost of militancy past, he backed proposed new laws on strike ballots and warned of “irresponsible minorities of trades unionists in the public services engaged in blackmailing their employers into pay rises or other concessions”.
I’ve discussed the legal aspects of strike ballots at length on here. Whether or not they are irresponsible, a minority of union militants can’t force a majority to take industrial action. Lord Tebbit knows this because he was a member of the governments that put a stop to the closed shop, mass picketing and the disciplining of union members for refusing to strike.
A lot has changed since the 1980s. As luck would have it, the ONS released the latest data on labour disputes…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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