- Education Secretary says hardliners are 'itching for a fight'
- Labour leader Ed Miliband says he does not support strikes because they were 'always a sign of failure'
- At least 90% of schools due to close and airport chaos expected
- Army on standby to deal with impact of 2m workers striking on Wednesday
In the strongest ministerial attack on the unions for a generation, Education Secretary Michael Gove blamed the strike on 'militants' who were 'itching for a fight' - and warned more than nine in ten schools will be closed as a result of tomorrow's walkout of up to two million workers.
'They want scenes of industrial strife on our TV screens, they want to make economic recovery harder, they want to provide a platform for confrontation just when we all need to pull together,' Mr Gove said.
Comment: "That image was cemented after al-Qaida's chief Osama bin Laden was found to have been hiding in an army town close to the Pakistani capital when he was killed."