So inflation is down and economists have voiced their “surprise”.  But has this made any real difference to workers?  This month, the cost of food was “only” 13. 6% higher, compared to August last year.  In fact the cost of food has gone up by 30% since 2020.  So the gap between living costs and wages remains.

    But only railway workers (including train drivers) and NHS doctors are maintaining some kind of fight for a pay rise.  The rail workers are the longest-serving veterans of this struggle, having started their strikes in June/July last year.  But except for the planned political gesture of a strike during the Tory Party Conference next month the doctors’ and train drivers’ strikes remain completely sectional and apart.

    Of course, strikes by NHS consultants make big news.  When their representative was asked by a radio presenter whether he thought about the situation of lower-paid patients who may have to wait longer for their treatment due to the strike, he said “well they can fight for higher wages too, like us”.

    This, in a nutshell, says it all: seeing the doctors’ fight for higher “salaries” as their own problem; not the problem of the working class as a whole, requiring a collective battle.  And it’s not just an arrogant professional doctor who has such a view: all the union leaders speak and act in the same out-of-touch way.  When Paul Novak, leader of the TUC, was interviewed by the BBC before TUC conference last week, he hadn’t even realised that the “great strike wave” of last year was over.  That it had already all but crashed against the rocks of the bosses’ refusal.

    The reason for the defeat of the strikes is clear: for many workers this was their first-ever action; they did not question the way the strikes were conducted, even if many felt that an indefinite collective and co-ordinated strike last summer would have been the best way to get a quick and effective victory.

    Union leaders, who have been allowed to concentrate the whole of a union’s power into their hands, were thus left wholly “in charge”, and as usual, they looked after their narrow interests - and the reputation of the Labour Party.  No way were they going to turn separate sectional fights into a united giant wave, which could have won in a week, if not a few days - and for everyone!

    That wouldn’t have been a revolution, even if that’s precisely what they feared - and even if that is precisely what is needed.  But it could have avoided this dragged-out rearguard battle, waged by the few, which for rail workers is already into its 16th month.

    It’s a lesson for the working class, though.  That it cannot leave union leaders to decide on its fate.