They needn't have worried
I came back today (Thursday) - Cumbrae - Largs - Glasgow - London. Yes there are cars in the street. Yes the trains are running. Even the busses are running. They aren't even all full. No worries whatsoever. The newspapers on the kiosks in the stations were bleating about an emergency, about sending in the troops, about the government falling - but everyone else seemed to be going about their business normally.
As crises go this has been pretty tame. It has had no effect on anything I have seen at all. Less street hassle than (say) the poll tax riots, or the famous run on sugar, and nothing at all compared with 1972 or 1974 or 1978/9 never mind 1981/2. It seems to be entirely got up by the tabloids & the oil companies. A washout. If this was the 1970s we'd all be queuing to buy candles by now. We had proper protests in them days. Not ones that started on Monday & were over by Wednesday evening.
The petrol stations are mostly owned by the same companies that own the oil distribution firms that have been voluntarily refusing to supply petrol. If the oil companies decide not to supply petrol their own garages why is that the government's fault? And what is the government meant to do about it? Send in troops to secure the refineries? Despite all those very genuine small operators being put on the telly, these "hauliers" who send road tankers to oil terminals are mostly 2 or 3 very large companies who are entirely dependent on big oil for business.
As an example of direct action, it was a bit weak. I didn't even hear about it till Monday evening and it was officially finished by Wednesday. The companies do seem to have backed down astonishingly quickly when the government stamped it's feet a few times.Blair: "I'm a really nasty bastard just like Thatcher! Tony's not for turning! I demand that you get back to work in 24 hours!"
Lorry owners: "Oh no we won't! This is People Power! We will never surrender! ... OK, we, will, but we will wait 28 hours before we cave in, just so as we can say you failed"
And the sight on TV of all those poor farmers whose poor little chickens would die if their cages weren't heated (as if they weren't going to be killed withing 6 weeks anyway) because there was no fuel because the fuel was being blockaded in the oil terminals by those very same farmers. Stroke of genius, that one.
I bet there were redundant miners weeping into their ale all the way from Selby to Morpeth. If only because those nice police are powerless to intervene in a strike of capital. That's not in the rules.
And now of course, they have given the government a 60-day ultimatum before they do it again. Presumably 60 days to get past the autumn finance statement. As well as 60 days to make whatever Thatcherite contingency the Government thinks it needs.
Pathetic.
In my adult memory a few dockers & a dead sheep could organise a better boycott, and did.