In its continued efforts to bring inflation down from its 26.9% August 1975 peak, Callaghan’s Labour Government had been urging restraint on the TUC through its phased incomes policy. The last phase of this was announced by Denis Healey on 21st July 1978, when he set a 5% limit on pay rises in the year from 1st August. This was rejected overwhelmingly at the TUC conference in Brighton on 6th September, and between mid- September until early February 1979 a series of crippling strikes broke out which together became known as the Winter of Discontent, causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the Labour Government and helping to usher in the Conservatives under Thatcher at the election in May.

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Chronology of the Winter of Discontent, as seen by the Conservative Research Department in its fortnightly magazine Politics Today, pp.42-47, No. 3, 19th February 1979 [Shelfmark: PUB 221/37]