THIS month marked four years since the defeat of the most serious challenge to British capitalism in decades — Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.

The coming year marks four decades since the start of the great miners’ strike of 1984-85, whose defeat signalled the decisive victory of Thatcher’s neoliberal project in Britain, prompting a sharp acceleration of her government’s privatisation drive (we lost public control of British Telecom, British Aerospace, British Petroleum, British Gas, British Steel, British Airways, Rolls-Royce and, at the tail-end of her decade in power, the municipally owned water and electricity boards).

Defeat of the miners ushered in a long period of decline for unions. There are less than half as many trade union members in Britain now as in 1980; less than a quarter of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, compared to more than half in 1980; the number and size of strikes declined too.