Thatcher's Nightmare: The Unions Rule Britain

In the thread about the miner's strike, I'm reading some comments that suggest Thatcher acted because the unions were trying to control the government rather than the electorate and one of the union biggies (Scargill?) had no problem with that.

(Pushing the government to expand coal-powered plants so that the union's grip on the country's short hairs would get even tighter. That strikes me as not a whole lot better than OPEC commandos sabotaging alternative-energy projects, only done through the mechanism of the state.)

So how might we get it so Britain is de facto a soviet state--not part of the USSR (no upper-case "s"), but one in which the state is controlled by the unions and not the electorate?
 

Thande

Donor
It pretty much was throughout much of the 70s. It's hard to see how it could have gone much further than it did, what with 'beer and sandwiches' being the norm.
 

Tovarich

Banned
It pretty much was throughout much of the 70s. It's hard to see how it could have gone much further than it did, what with 'beer and sandwiches' being the norm.

Y'know, I could post a rebuttal here, but I've decided it'll be much more fun to wait for 'Prankster to come back online and watch him trying to figure out exactly what Thande is referring to:D
(Can it be a similar sense of mischief that led Thande to post that in the first place? Surely not!):rolleyes:

Don't anyone else let on, alright?
 
(Psst! Americans! Over here!)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1411934.stm

"In the days before Thatcherism, union bosses would routinely pop round to Number 10 for 'beer and sandwiches' - usually a euphemism for hard-ball policy discussions."

Sort of like a Pinko British version of that time Obama ended racism by having a beer with Cornell West and that police officer.
 

Thande

Donor
Sort of like a Pinko British version of that time Obama ended racism by having a beer with Cornell West and that police officer.
Mmm...to use that metaphor, it's more the case of that police officer going to have beer with Obama and then telling him he'd better get him off the charges or the entire national police force will walk out and turn over the inner cities to the criminals, right now.
 
So how might we get it so Britain is de facto a soviet state--not part of the USSR (no upper-case "s"), but one in which the state is controlled by the unions and not the electorate?

Have Britain retain serfdom until the 1880's, cut down on the education of the working and middle class, institute an absolute autocracy that has little or no connection with the nation's people, lose a major war on the far side of the world and finally get millions killed in the first world war.

Or ask a passing ASB.

Seriously unless this is taking place in a totally different 20th Century from ours having a "soviet state" in Britain is even less likely than than having one in America.
 
Yes, for a somewhat ASB (but plausible-ish once it's happened - if you see what I mean) Soviet Britain check out the Union of Britain in Kaiserreich. It's the centrepiece of the TL in my sig.
 
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