GRAIN POWER STATION has come to the rescue. The old oil-burning station was mothballed in 2003, but reopened in 2006, in the face of increasing power demands, and now provides up to three per cent of the National Grid supply.

Now there are plans to build a gas-fired power station alongside for when the old one reaches the end of its design life. Let's hope its birth will be a much happier affair that its predecessor's.

The history of Grain Power Station is smeared with industrial unrest and culminated in a bitter dispute that almost ripped the Trades Union Congress apart.

Even its construction was dogged. Work started in 1971 and by late 1972 most of the 600 workers employed by contractors John Laing were operating an overtime ban and work-to rule in support of a demand for a minimum of 65p an hour. Then the steel-fixers wanted their cut. They demanded a bonus scheme that would give them a minimum hourly bonus rate of £1 in addition to their basic rate.

In November that year, 70 men working for a sub-contractor were sacked after  what the News called "industrial blackmail by a group of workers demanding a fantastic £14-a-week pay rise, which would fetch their wage for a 40-hour week to £60". In March, 1973, the construction workers were on the picket lines. Some 450 men downed tools after demanding a minimum bonus of 50p an hour.

Even their union didn't support them. Frank Byrne of the Transport and General Workers'  Union told them that if they did not go back to work a union commission would be called and "the dice would be loaded against you". He thought the men would be sacked if they didn't go back to work. Another union official said: "The bonus on the site isn't at all bad."

At one stage even the tea ladies went on strike.

The mother of all battles came in 1980 after 27 laggers — the men who put thermal insulation of the power station's pipes, boilers and turbines — were sacked after a pay claim. David Basnett, general secretary of the general and Municipal Workers' Union, took draconian action. He announced that an official picket line would be mounted at the gates - that meant up to 6,000 thermal insulation workers at heavy constructions sites throughout Britain would stop work to take part in a mass picket at Grain.

This was seen as intimidation — not only by the employers, but also by the other unions on the site. It became civil war — union against union, playing into the hands of Margaret Thatcher's year-old government. 

The worst day came on 27 May, 1980, when 1,400 members of rival unions were driven on to the site in defiance of 400 GMWU pickets. Thirty-eight strikers were arrested as police fought to hold back laggers from attacking coaches, cars and vans bringing the rest of the construction workforce to the site.

I was out there, reporting on the amazing barricade, with fellow News reporter Dave Hannah, plus photographers Ray Christopher, Vernon Stratford and Tony Butler. It was overwhelming, scary, and got the news adrenaline pumping. (Dave — who now prefers to be called David — spent some time chatting up a Guardian reporter later identified as Melanie Phillips, now the why-oh-why dreary Deirdre of the Daily Mail.)

This was front-page news all over the country. The Times reported that bitterness of the inter-union feelings were shown when John Baldwin, boss of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, was confronted by Frank Earl of the GMWU. "We're going through, Frank," said Baldwin. Earl replied: "Anyone who goes across an official picket line is not a trade unionist."

Violent scenes could not stop the work. Other men from another union had been trained to do the lagging work and site construction continued. But it was a dirty business. Soon after peace returned to Grain, the men who braved the union's wrath to save the power station were summarily sacked.

Last days of the golden goose

PEACE CAME TO GRAIN after a formula worked out by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) so arcane to be almost incomprehensible. This, after all, is the time after union ascendancy, an era lacking the legions of industrial correspondents who translated the pompous drivel spouted by many union leaders.

The peace plan was to replace the substitute laggers with GMWU men and to make an agreement covering all workers on the site.

Three unions, however, were having none of it. The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (engineering and construction sections). the Electrical, Electronic Telecommunications and Plumbing Union said no. They refused to accept that their recruits should leave in favour of GMWU men and they said that the TUC formula was unworkable. The TUC in turn, threatened to expel them from the congress.

By the end of the decade, sparked by the disastrous miners' strike, Thatcher had al but destroyed the unions. The golden goose was dead.

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