“If It Means Lives Lost That is How it Must Be”: The Ethics of Strike Action in the NHS, from the Winter of Discontent to the Nurses’ Strike of 2022-2023
Ethical questions are seldom asked about trade union activities and of trade unionists themselves. Both scholars of labour history and industrial relations and trade unionists themselves would regard the altering of the balance of forces with the employers and the state as the key political question...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb, |
|---|---|
| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Publié: |
Revue française de civilisation britannique
2026
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Ethical questions are seldom asked about trade union activities and of trade unionists themselves. Both scholars of labour history and industrial relations and trade unionists themselves would regard the altering of the balance of forces with the employers and the state as the key political question in relation to collective action. Still, there exists an area of trade union activism and scholarly interest where one finds a body of literature discussing the place of ethics in collective action, namely in health service unionism and in research on collective action taken by health service workers. This article first discusses the foregrounding of ethical concern as a key discursive device in anti-union, anti-strike coverage of industrial disputes in the UK National Health Service. It then looks at how the development of health service trade unionism in the 1970s was conceived, by trade unionists and scholars alike, as a move away, a liberation from ethical concern, in a mirror image of the anti-strike discourses. Finally, the article looks at the embedded ethics of strike action during the 2022-2023 UK nurses’ strike. |
|---|