Agree with you for the most part, but I also think even if the Unison members had been out in force the leadership would've still backed out. Remember they bailed out less than 24 hours after Nov 30th. There was no meetings with rank and rile or other reps, no post-mortem to analyse the strength of the strike, it was an executive decision taken immediately after the strike. More than likely they made this decision before the day of strike action, but were under pressure from their membership to go along with the rest of the Trade Union movement, so they reluctantly agreed to join in Nov 30. I think, as do a lot more senior Unison people who I've spoken too about this, that the leadership were reluctant from the start and would've bailed out regardless of what happened on the day itself.
Consider this, even if they had a massive turnout, would that alone have reversed the policy? No, of course not. The Tories won't budge an inch, and they're more than happy to use the full powers of the British state to have their way. If they'd had a massive turnout, I think that'd have made little difference in the end.
I also think that looking for uniformity in strike action with these massive amalgamated unions like Unison and Unite is a bit of a waste of time. These unions represent millions of workers, in many different areas, in different trades, with different pension schemes and political battles. You'll never get uniformity in these kinds of unions and looking for it is a waste of time. Furthermore, it's one of the age old excuses for calling off a strike. It was the exact same excuse the more moderate Chartist leaders used to dissuade the "physical force" Chartists from calling a national strike in 1838. It was one of the reasons the leadership of the TUC called off the General Strike 1926. If you look in detail you'll see this come up again and again. It's holding the movement to a standard they know damn well is impossible to reach, which provides a convenient pretext for bailing out and saving the Labour party the embarassment of having to publicly condemn strikes.
The far left is also to blame for this, because they have a nostalgic commitment to one big day of action, as if all it will take is one day of herculean effort and before you know it we'll all be storming the bastille. In truth this is a stupid policy. The strength isn't there for starters, and even if it was, the trade unions even at their peak are no match for a sovereign state, especially not one as stable, wealthy and militarised as Britain. Even at their peak with 17 or 18 million members we could never have done it. Once you call a general strike, you're effectively challenging the legitimacy of the state itself. It's not just bargaining. They learned this the hard way in France in 1968, once you've crossed that point you're in a fight to the finish with the State, there's no going back to asking for concessions once you've challenged the state like that.
EDIT: A quick note here. The main reason the far-left sects advocate these "days of action" isn't because it's a workable strategy, but because it gives them a huge opportunity to sell papers and recruit members. I remember going to a Trot-Meet shortly after the 30th strike. There I was told that the strike was a great success; they'd signed up 10 new members, got hundreds of names on a petition, they even managed to sell a record breaking number of papers, breaking the previous record held by the Anti-War marches in 2003. Barely a mention of how good the turnout was. They judge how successful these things are by how many papers they can sell, and they can sell more papers on these big demo's than they can anywhere else.
Ironicaly of course my area really did have a decent turnout. Every school was shut, the council offices were practically all shut, all the auxillary staff at every school, swimming baths, and hospital were out. The only place that wasn't shut was the job centre, which struggled on with a skeleton staff of about 12. There was definitely some potential here, although I gather the situation was different in other parts of the country? Why should we have to back down, just because somewhere else couldn't be arsed? Why should the people who couldn't be arsed be leading the struggle instead of the people who were?
There's also the fact the Tories would love nothing more than a huge centre-piece showdown with the Trade Unions at this point in time. One great big pitched battle which they know, ultimately, they will win because they can use force if need be. Look at how they reacted to the threat of an Oil Tankers strike, one of those few unionised industries that really could bring the country to it's knees if they went ahead. They revelled in the possibility of a re-enactment of 1984, we'd be foolish to give it to them. I'm no fan of Labour affiliated union bureaucrats, but lets be honest, if the far-left ran Unite they'd have gone headfirst into that fight with no thought to the consequences. As it happens Len McCluskey isn't Arthur Scargill, and Len boxed clever and ended up making a fool out of the govt by doing so.We're fighting an enemy that outguns and outnumbers us, so we can't just meet them in straight-up combat, we have to use guerilla tactics and gradually sap away at the enemies will (if you'll forgive all the shit military analogies)
What should've happened after November 30th is Unison should've looked at the area's with the highest turnout, and for all the doom and gloom there were many area's that did have a good turnout, and then started a series of local disputes in those areas. A slow and steady stream of local strikes, dozens of them simultaneously, and as soon as one stops another one in another industry strikes. No big "day of action" but a sustained campaign, so that the drip drip drip of news in local papers and regional news about strikes popping up all over the place gets out there, adding to the general sense of disapproval that this government already has hanging around it, like a fart in a confined space that won't go away.
People need to remember this is a deeply unpopular government. After only 2 years, they're polling -35 or more for their approval ratings; this is worse than Thatcher at her least popular, worse than Blair at the height of the Iraq War, worse than Brown during the height of the expenses scandal. All it could take is for one of these smaller strikes to catch the public mood and you never know it could surprise us all. But they aren't playing this game at the moment.
