On Jan. 10, 1979, a tanned Jim Callaghan, then the prime minister of Great Britain, gave an impromptu press conference at a freezing Heathrow on his return from a Caribbean summit. An unofficial strike by lorry drivers had halted petrol supplies and the country was almost at a standstill. Troops were on standby for a state of emergency to be declared. Callaghan's view that this did not amount to "mounting chaos" led the Sun to carry the front page headline quoting Callaghan as saying "Crisis, what Crisis?" and its editorial to use Shakespeare's opening line from Richard III, "Now is the winter of our discontent."
Between October 1978 and February 1979 Britain experienced a wave of strikes on a scale that hadn't been seen since the General Strike of 1926. First Ford workers, then lorry drivers, council workers and NHS staff all walked out causing severe disruption to public services. This series of events came to be known as "the Winter of Discontent". This phrase, borrowed from Shakespeare's play Richard III, and the events it described continue to have considerable impact on British culture even now.