The “winter of discontent,” as Tara Martin López insists, was both a real and important event and a myth. The task Martin López sets herself is not merely to separate myth from reality but also to explain the background to the series of strikes that occurred in late 1978 and early 1979, to assess the strikes' meaning for participants, and to examine the subsequent construction and use of the myth. It is a rather daunting undertaking, and she mostly succeeds at it. She has done a great deal of research, put together a clear and judicious argument, and, through selected use of oral history interviews, allowed participants to tell their own stories. That said, the complexity of the tale and the different things Martin López wants to do with it make for some confusions and contradictions.

The most obvious contradiction is between the meaning of the strikes for the workers themselves and its meaning for the unions and for the Labour Party with which the unions were linked. Martin López is to some extent a practitioner of what used to be called “the new social history,” with its focus on social context, local circumstances, and “agency.” She thus explains clearly the long-term changes in the economy and the workplace that helped produce the explosion of unrest. A particular focus is on how, as traditional industries declined, increasing numbers of women and, to a lesser extent, nonwhite workers came to make up a new working class, concentrated in the service sector. These workers found themselves in a different relationship to their employers, who were the government. It was thus a Labour government and, locally, Labour-controlled local authorities against whom strikes would be directed.

Public-sector workers had also been traditionally less well paid than those in private industry. Their grievances were deeper and more raw, and when they finally took action, the conflicts were bitter; of necessity, they involved tactics that were disruptive to the public. From her interviews, Martin López learns a great deal about these newly militant workers and finds, not surprisingly, that many found the strikes liberating and empowering. Of course, taking part in a powerful movement often makes people feel that way, and for some that new sense of collective capacity and of possibility persists. But for others it does not; and, even more important, the experience of defeat can have a deeper and more lasting effect on the ability of workers and unions to make their case and prevail.

In order to explain such wider effects, one needs a slightly different approach, one that focuses on politics and political economy. Martin López does not ignore these issues entirely, but her framework does not accord them sufficient importance. Instead, she directs her attention at how Thatcher and the Conservatives began early on to create the myth of the “winter of discontent” and use it to their advantage. She does a very good job at this, crediting Thatcher with a keen sense of how to frame the issues and making clear how inept the Labour government's responses were. Martin López also concedes that the unions did their best to give ammunition to their opponents. She provides, for example, a sympathetic portrait of gravediggers in Liverpool, but admits that they refused to bury the dead. Likewise, she understands the grievances of workers in the road haulage industry but acknowledges that their actions threatened shortages of hospital supplies, food, and animal feed. So, too, Martin López writes poignantly about the conditions facing health care workers, but here again she makes clear that their actions did have an impact on the sick. Overall, her treatment of the creation of the myth of the “winter of discontent” and of the raw material from which it was fashioned is enlightening and judicious.

Martin López could have done more, however, to analyze the politics of the “winter of discontent” and why it was so destructive to Labour, not only to its electoral fortunes in May 1979 but to its broader claim to govern. The key issue that needs to be brought into the analysis is the relationship between Labour and the unions and its effect on Labour's political and economic strategy. The unions had long represented the core of the party, but in the 1960s and 1970s the link became central to the party's approach to governance. In a context of mounting inflation, the priority for all governments was to hold back prices and wages in order to allow for sustained growth. Labour decided that it could trust its ties to the unions to make this happen. The most explicit version of this was the “social contract” that party leaders worked out with the leaders of the unions prior to taking office in February 1974. The “social contract” called for the repeal of Tory legislation on unions passed by the Heath government and for the close coordination of policy between the government and the unions. The government would seek to control prices but allow unions to manage wages on their own. In return, the government would introduce policies to increase the “social wage” designed to benefit the less well paid. The deal held for four years, but it came under increasing strain. Skilled workers in particular chafed at policies that disadvantaged them. Meanwhile, and more importantly, holding wages down while prices increased diminished real wages for workers overall.

The Callaghan government hoped that the deal would last longer and, specifically, that the unions would abide by the government's percent guideline for wage increases in 1978–79. That did not happen: first, it was workers at Ford who insisted on an increase of 16 percent; then road haulage drivers struck before winning increases of 15–20 percent; and then workers throughout the public sector held a day of action on 22 January 1979, launching a series of stoppages to gain comparable wage increases. These battles were in fact successful, and by most measures (see, for example, the data from MeasuringWorth) workers’ earnings advanced by over 10 percent between 1977 and 1982.

The political effects of strikes were nevertheless devastating. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Labour's main claim to rule was that they, and they alone, could work with the unions, guarantee industrial peace, and run the economy effectively. The claim was utterly discredited by the events of 1978–79, and it was this policy wreckage, not simply the much-recycled images of the “winter of discontent” itself, that made Labour unelectable for nearly two decades and allowed Thatcher and the Tories to dominate political and economic life for so long.

Tara Martin López has done a real service by revisiting the “winter of discontent” and providing such a rich and stimulating account. She could have done more to explore the political and economic context and consequences, but her book is an excellent starting point for rethinking this pivotal moment in Britain's postwar history.