>Glad you got it working. I owe you an apology - seems that binding a property in an isolated scope of a directive is a special case.
>The correct syntax is :
>The attribute value on the markup for the directive should be the *name* of the property in the scope where it is used.
>In the isolated scope you bind to the attribute name (converting snake to camel)
>So:

Controller on the element where the directive is used:
>$scope.disableClearMessage = true;
>// Directive attribute:
>disable-action = "disableClearMessage"
>// Directive scope:
>disableAction : '='
>//Directive template:
>ng-disabled = "{{disableAction}}"

>
>Hope that clears it up :-}

In my case the template is

template: '<a ng-click="click()" ng-disabled="disableAction" >{{ linkText }}</a>'

Yet is seems to be working correctly - it is enabled when it should be enabled and disabled when it should be disabled.