That Britain demonstrates stable labour relations and possesses one of the least regulated labour markets in the world is seen today as a well-established reality. What else would you expect of a nation that has been for so long the champion of freedom, market economics and democracy?
Before Margaret Thatcher, things were very different.
It is difficult now to describe just how different, let alone to convey how hopeless seemed the chances of escaping a miserable reputation as the sick man of Europe, to which Britain had been reduced by drift, debt and decay, rather like Greece today. The country was living above its means, supporting a massive and unproductive public sector, struggling with runaway inflation and plagued by recurrent and unpredictable industrial action that disrupted essential services and damaged industrial production and the quality of its output.
There was no real argument between governments of the left and the right when it came to the fundamentals. That needs saying now, because too often today the measures Mrs Thatcher pursued are seen not only as excessively painful – which they surely were, particularly for single industry towns in the coal and steel belts – but as unnecessary. That ignores both the situation with which she grappled successfully and the failed efforts of preceding governments who lacked her nerve to get to grips with it.
Inflation, that worst enemy of pensioners and the poor, was running at close to 20% a year and had to be brought under control.