Strikers are providing the opposition Britain desperately needs Andy Beckett

In very public ways, you will be breaking the rules of the modern economy: refusing to work, inconveniencing consumers, acting collectively rather than individually, and making demands for more money openly – rather than in private, as more powerful people do. If you are on the left, you are likely to be told again and again that your strike is politically counter productive.

Such are the written and unwritten laws that have constricted British strikes ever since the walkouts