Leadsled, clearly I wasn't in as exalted position as yourself during that time, but I can tell you from a coal face participant that our concern was entirely about safety and our ongoing ability to stay alive and NOT industrial.
Who manipulated what to achieve what end was not visible to the mere mortals but it achieved what we had hoped it would achieve, which was to put a stop to a change that we felt was reckless and stupid in the extreme.
I have popped out of cloud in a dash 8 to have the windscreen literally filled with an unannounced Pitts special flown by a now deceased "legend" of aviation who was doing a bit of VFR don't ask and don't tell aviating and it frightened the crap out of me with the rapidity with which it occurred and the impact (both literally and figuratively) that it would have had if we were no more than 5-10 seconds earlier or maybe 2-3 knots faster, because you would have had 36 pax plus 3 crew plus the legend in a Pitts spread across the landscape.
Not saying that NAS did or didn't have anything to do with that but it occurred at the same time and demonstrated to me how quickly things can evolve, particularly in weather that isn't 8/8 blue.
All done and dusted these days of course and we are just arguing like Statler and Waldorf from the muppets, but please don't dismiss any contrary view as simply being a reflection of a presupposed industrial agenda and not founded in a good faith belief that the proposed system was fundamentally flawed, regardless of its pedigree.