Editing Winter of Discontent (section)

===Gravediggers' strike===

At a strike committee meeting in the [[Liverpool]] area earlier in January, it was reported that although local [[binmen]] were supportive of the strike, they did not want to be the first to do so as they had always been. The committee then asked Ian Lowes, [[convener]] for the [[General and Municipal Workers' Union]] (GMWU) local, to have the gravediggers and [[crematorium]] workers he represented take the lead instead. He accepted, as long as the other unions followed; and the GMWU's national executive approved the strike.<ref name="Lopez 121-23" />

Those unions had never gone on strike before, Lowes recalled in 2006, and he had not expected that permission to be granted. "I knew how the press was going to latch on to it," he said, "and they totally underestimated the venom that headed our way." [[Larry Whitty]], an executive official with the union, also agreed later that it had been a mistake to approve the strike.<ref name="Lopez 121-23" /> The GMWU at the time was also known as the most conservative and least militant of the public employee unions; frequently it had used its influence within the Labour Party to frustrate left-wing challenges to the leadership, and its officials rarely faced contested elections for their positions. Faced with the growing threat from the [[National Union of Public Employees]] (NUPE) and the [[Confederation of Health Service Employees]] (COHSE), both of which were growing more quickly, it was trying not to be what members of those unions called the '[[Scab labour|scab]] union'.<ref name="Lopez 117-18">{{harvp|López|2014|pages=117–118}}</ref>

The ensuing strike, in Liverpool and in [[Tameside]] near [[Manchester]], was later frequently referred to by Conservative politicians.<ref>{{harvp|Moore|2014|page=399}}</ref> With 80 gravediggers being on strike, [[Liverpool City Council]] hired a factory in [[Speke]] to store the corpses until they could be buried. The Department of Environment noted that there were 150 bodies stored at the factory at one point, with 25 more added every day. The reports of unburied bodies caused concern with the public.<ref name="Travis">{{cite news |last=Travis |first=Alan |title=National archives: Fear of fights at cemetery gates during 1979 winter of discontent|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/30/liverpool-gravedigger-strikes|newspaper=The Guardian|date=30 December 2009}}</ref> On 1 February a persistent journalist asked the Medical Officer of Health for Liverpool, Dr Duncan Bolton, what would be done if the strike continued for months, Bolton speculated that [[burial at sea]] would be considered. Although his response was hypothetical, in the circumstances it caused great alarm. Other alternatives were considered, including allowing the bereaved to dig their own funeral's graves, deploying troops, and engaging private contractors to inter the bodies. The main concerns were said to be aesthetic because bodies could be safely stored in heat-sealed bags for up to six weeks.<ref name="Travis"/> Bolton later reported being "horrified" by the sensationalised reportage of the strike in the mass media.<ref>{{cite journal |first=James |last=Thomas |title='Bound by History': The Winter of Discontent in British Politics 1979–2004 |journal=Media, Culture & Society |volume=29 |issue=2 |date=2007 |page=270|doi=10.1177/0163443707074257 |s2cid=145626459 }}</ref> The gravediggers eventually settled for a 14 per cent rise after a fortnight off the job.

In their later memoirs, Callaghan and Healey both blamed NUPE for letting the strike go on as long as it did, as would Conservatives. While the Tameside gravediggers had been members of that union, those in the Liverpool area were GMWU.<ref>{{harvp|López|2014|page=110}}</ref>