Unions can't resist the call to arms. But who'll get hurt? | Simon Jenkins

If public sector workers do deploy the primeval strike weapon, working parents and patients will suffer, not a Tory government

Are we really to go on strike again now, in the 21st century? Is there no other way of fixing a row in the public realm than through so primeval a weapon as withdrawing labour from the public welfare? It is like "protecting" Libya by bombing it, or curing poverty with a luxury summit.

Britain's union leaders have spent two decades in relative seclusion. A few, like Bob ...