What has made mainline cabin crew admired and looked upon as elite professionals in the airline community is the stance the union has made to always improve the T&C's
I would disagree with this, What has made BA crew admired and viewed as elite professionals is not their remuneration package but the way in which they have delivered their service over the years. Passengers do not actually care about whether or not you earn peanuts, they care that they are looked after well, especially when things go awry. You and your peers have, over many years, worked hard to achieve a reputation for good service.
The acts of BASSA, and it's hard line adherents have, over the last 18 months, done more damage to the reputation of BA CC than it is possible to fathom. Portrayal of the CEO as a devil, wandering around in pants, drinking Pimms and loafing around in a convertible M3, singing songs about fornicating with loaders rather than non-strikers, etc etc etc. ALL the above has done endless harm to the reputation of BA CC. There is no reputation now as elite or professional, the idiots at Bedfont saw to that.
It does not really matter who said what to whom, or which side made a provocative act on what date. As you asked at the end of your post, where will it end? There is an opportunity to end it now, though my personal belief is that the hard core vote will be sufficient to scupper this.
A No vote would bring this to an end, IA only works as a tool when there is some form of viable threat associated with it. "Give us a pay rise or we will bring the company to it's knees", when there is no ability to bring the company to it's knees the threat is empty. Another strike will only really harm those that go on strike, the last set of strikes was not well enough supported to do enough damage to BA to make it effective. There is no evidence to suggest another strike will be any better supported and BA is far more prepared now than it was before.
Strikers will lose pay, probably ST again and indeed risk losing their jobs. It will either end in a NO vote or it will end in a very ugly manner for the strikers. BA have proven that the strikes are an inconvenience and nothing more, when the inconvenience becomes too great they will "clean house" and the real world of job hunting is cold and lean and mean. It will only get worse as the public spending cuts bite. It is time for BASSA to sue for peace, admit they lost and start acting as a union and give up their pretensions to run the company.