Postal strikes are back in the news again (indeed, there may well be another one scheduled by the time you read this). The most famous one, however, was that held in early 1971 – the first national ‘all-out’ postal strike in British history.
It took place against a background of rising inflation and fraught industrial relations in the previous decade (both in the Post Office and the country in general). The Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) were asking for wage rises of 15% to meet cost-of-living rises in 1970, but the Post Office Board’s offer was only