Nostalgia waltzed into town last week. On Saturday night, Fleetwood Mac played the O2 in Dublin. This particular incarnation of the band reached mega fame with the album Rumours in 1977. That was back in the day when they snorted mountains of coke, swapped partners within the band, and produced an album of classic middle-of-the-road rock.

On Monday, Peter Green, who was an original member of the band in the late 1960s, played a solo gig in Abbey Street. He had left by the time the band recorded Rumours. He is a blues man, who wouldn't know middle-of-the-road rock if it rose up and snorted him on his fret-gripping fingers. Sometimes, it's difficult to believe these were two incarnations of the same band. They are of different worlds.

On Tuesday, more nostalgia. Arthur Scargill arrived in Dublin to mark the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike in Britain. To anybody over 40, the strike will be remembered as a defining juncture of the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher was determined to break the powerful National Union of Mineworkers, of which Scargill was president.

A major strike ensued. Serious hardship was endured by thousands who depended on the mines for a livelihood. Violence pervaded the dispute. People took sides. Both Thatcher and Scargill were intransigent and possessed of a tunnel vision. In the end, Thatcher won, the miners went back to work, and the neo-liberal agenda tramped over the last embers of socialism that burned in Britain.

In some sectors of the trade union movement, Scargill is an iconic figure. Last Tuesday, at a public meeting in the offices of the Unite trade union, he had a great welcome for himself. He opened by quoting from a book about the strike.

"It said that Arthur Scargill had his phone tapped since the 1950s because he was a danger to the system. Too bloody right I was. I hate capitalism."

Self-justification informed almost everything he said after that. He raked over the tactics, which had been criticised by the trade-union congress and the Labour Party in Britain. He claimed that a fish-and-chip shop where some of the leaders ate had been bugged. He even suggested that MI5 was likely to have had an agent in the crowd of 90 or so who were attending Tuesday's meeting.

"Anybody who thinks they can operate within the trade union movement and not be under surveillance is living in dreamland," he said.

Sitting there, listening to Scargill expand on his own legend, I couldn't help thinking of a line from an old Peter Green song called 'Oh Well'. "Don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to."

Twice he referenced the strike as having been a "terrific dispute". The only people who would most likely think of it in those terms are Scargill and Thatcher, both of whose stock rose exponentially among their respective followers.

It wasn't terrific for the miners or their families, or the victims of the violence. It wasn't terrific for the social fabric of the state and it certainly wasn't terrific in widening the gap between north and south in England. But Maggie and Arthur had a jolly old time of it.

After Scargill's speech, references were made to the day of action scheduled by trade unions for next Friday. Here it became obvious that Scargill and the Irish comrades are, like Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac, of different worlds.

Far from being under surveillance by the state, the unions over the last 12 years were an integral component in shaping the state, as the government pursed its neo-Thatcher agenda. Partnership survived and prospered through the boom and bubble years. Cutting taxes was a central theme. The unions were in on the policy that relied on the bubble cash to fund services and pay rises. All of this at a time when the unions' influence on the private sector was diminishing to the point where they largely speak only for the public sector.

The edifice has come crashing down. Bills are mounting up, €32bn coming in to fund a state that costs around €57bn. Partnership is broken and the unions are threatening the kind of unrest not seen on these islands since the miners' strike.

The unions are correct in asserting that the wealthiest are not being asked to fairly share the burden. There is a solid case for a third rate of tax for the wealthy. Most of those in the public sector aren't responsible for the mess, but neither are the 200,000 thrust onto the dole. And to be fair, precious few union leaders have a Scargill complex.

Resistance to pay cuts in the public sector is entirely understandable at a time when mortgage repayments are expected to begin a steep climb. But there will be little sympathy among those who work outside the public sector, and particularly those who haven't got work at all.

Despite the best efforts of union leaders, there is going to be a terrible fracture in society over the coming months. If heads can't be knocked together, we are set to go back to the future, right back to when Scargill was in his prime, when Fleetwood Mac were rolling in the dough, when strikes caused serious hardship and division.

There will be nothing terrific about it. There will be no winners. Nobody will be dining out for the next 25 years on tales of derring-do from the winter of 2009.

mclifford@tribune.ie