UK: annual number of workers on strike 2010-2019, by sector

Throughout its history, the United Kingdom has experienced several periods of widespread labor unrest. From the general strike of 1926 to the huge miner's strikes of the 1980s, the country is no stranger to strikes, slowdowns and stoppages of work. Since the 1980s, however, the trade union movement has declined in importance in the United Kingdom, first being proscribed in its activities by the reforms of the Conservative Thatcher & Major governments (1979-1997), and later being sidelined by its traditional bastion of political power, the Labour Party, during the New Labour governments (1997-2010). This decline in political centrality meant that trade unions were more and more isolated to certain sectors, such as public sector workers, while their membership in manufacturing and services declined rapidly.

A decade of unrest, but few strikes

The record of strikes in the 2010s demonstrates this decline, as the early years of the decade were marked by a lull in strike activities, with never more than 150 thousand workers out on strike in a year from 2010 to 2017. This came in spite of the prolonged economic downturn in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and great recession, and the Conservative government's policies of austerity. Towards the end of the decade, workers in the more unionized public sector began to strike again in large numbers, protesting the cutbacks to public services since the beginning of the decade. Healthcare workers in the National Health Service (NHS), teachers and academics in the public education system, as well as transport workers in the privatized railway sector went out on strike over the years of 2018 and 2019, causing a dramatic increase in the total workers on strike in these years.