(03-30-2020, 03:13 PM)fuzzbox Wrote: "It was first coined by the UK press and Conservative MPs during the three-day week; then used more widely during the Winter of Discontent ..."
I've only heard it from a German, but I'm sure you're right. A love of self-flagellation is another of our 'traits'. Thinking about it, I remember a french girl saying exactly that, but not in this context!
I'm not sure the demonisation of the trade union movement in the early 1970s was a form of "self-flagellation", more the Tories and their friends in the right-wing press warming up for the subsequent all out war on the working-classes under Thatcher.