Today and tomorrow, The Royal Gazette is taking a look back at the 1981 General Strike and its ramifications.

For many Bermudians under the age of 35, the strike will be either a distant memory or something their parents and grandparents talk about.

But at the time, it was a massive confrontation between labour and Government with very high stakes.

As reported by Dan Jones, there is little argument about the causes of the strike or the events surrounding it.

Runaway inflation meant the cost of living in Bermuda was rising rapidly, and the scale of wage increases in these days of three or four percent annual pay hikes seems extraordinary. But there was nothing unusual at the time about the Government offering no more than a 15 percent raise to hospital workers while the Bermuda Industrial Union was standing its ground on 25 percent.

The strike must also be seen in the context of earlier civil disturbances, including the 1977 riots. And just one year earlier, the United Bermuda Party had squeaked back into power while the Progressive Labour Party was confidently expecting to win the next Election.

All of these factors played a part in the dispute, and The Royal Gazette's stories fill out the details.

What fewer people agree on are the General Strike's consequences.

For those within the labour movement, it is clearly seen as a triumph, although in retrospect, it can also be seen as the BIU's high water mark. An organisation's decline begins at the time when it has reached its peak, and the BIU's decline can be measured from 1981.

The long decline of tourism also began in 1981. Bermuda's record year remains 1980, and no year has approached it since.

These two peaks and subsequent declines are linked. The sight of tourists carrying their bags through picket lines into the Airport did extraordinary damage to the Island's premier industry and Bermuda developed a bad reputation for labour unrest in hotels from 1981 on.

While there were other reasons for tourism's decline, it is fair to say that the BIU was emboldened by the 1981 strike and felt able to stage walkouts in the hotels and elsewhere that compounded the problem.

Nonetheless, the strike also forced all sides to look over the abyss, and it is worth noting that there has not been a general strike since. Indeed, in the early 1990s, when the BIU tried to force a strike of all of its members, many refused to come out.

At the same time, the strike had other consequences. Although Sir David Gibbons denies it, the strike weakened his position as Premier and made it difficult for him to carry on and he would resign 18 months later.

That had massive consequences for local politics, because it paved the way for Sir John Swan — seen as the politician who settled the strike — to succeed him. Under his tenure, the UBP staged a remarkable comeback while the PLP went from being poised to take power to being hopelessly divided within a few short years.

Where the strike did have merit was in forcing the Government and Establishment of the day to focus much more closely on social issues, notably housing, which then had — as it does today — a disproportionate effect on the spiralling cost of living.

Could it happen again? On the face of it, it seems unlikely. Bermuda is a different place than it was 25 years ago. Organised labour is weaker, and the extraordinary global inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s seems to have been tamed.

But many of the same social issues still exist, notably the gap between the richest and poorest in society, housing. Bermuda continues to try to balance the problems of a high cost of living against the need to contain costs in a global economy which is more competitive than ever.

Perhaps what should be asked before anyone embarks on that path is whether anyone truly "won" as a result of the strike. And the answer to that must surely be no. Everyone would have benefited if a settlement had been reached without such a confrontation. And that's a lesson all should remember.