Britain: A Long Summer of Discontent

Sound, fury and rotting fruit signify trouble for Thatcher

In the end, the strike was settled not by artful negotiation but by an eruption of hot-tempered fury. As the walkout by Britain's 17,700 dock workers dragged into its second week, the truck drivers stuck at the port of Dover grew surlier. By late last week the motorway snaking through the tranquil Kent countryside had burgeoned into a five-mile parking lot, replete with the bellow of air horns and the whiff of rotting fruit destined never to reach its market. The curses grew saltier,...

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