Badge - Civil Servants Against the State
Object
Badge
Production date
1981
Object number
2024.362
Physical Description
Circular badge, white background with black text. Detail of the St Edwards crown of Queen Elizabeth's royal cypher commonly used by government.
Object history
Related to the 1981 Civil Servants Strike
Personal experiences
Shared by Mary Pimm and Nik Wood, owners of the badge and union activists with the Society of Civil and Public Servants (SCPS):
The next big strike was in 1981, and this was a lot fiercer. We had a rolling programme of one day strikes for everybody, and there were long continuous strikes by people who take money in, customs and people like that, in an attempt to try and put the pressure on. But then you had one day demonstrative strikes. It was as simple as that the 1979 strike had failed to get us more money, and then Jim Callahan had lost the election and we'd had a year out and then we said we're going to have another go.
Civil service pay was mediocre by the standards of office work of the time, and then the Tory government abolished the Pay Research Unit. In the past they did a research of salaries of people in analogous jobs, and we had a bit taken off for the fact that we
had decent pensions. So, up until then it had been reasonable.
And then we had the joys of Margaret Thatcher's government, and this was the opening shot of it. We were one of the first to be involved. And we lost. We failed to get any real money again. Twenty week strike. For those of us who'd been really active it broke our hearts. But we sellotaped them together and we were okay.
This badge wasn't official from the top of the Union. It was just a friend of ours, one of our National Executive blokes, he was in Nottingham and they found somebody and they cranked out their own. So we think that's quite fun.
Associated Organisation
Society of Civil and Public Servants
Associated Person
Associated Place
Westminster (Place)
Material
Metal
Plastic
Dimension
Circumference: 45mm
On display?
No
Inscription
CIVIL
SERVANTS
AGAINST
THE
STATE
SERVANTS
AGAINST
THE
STATE
