THIS is a year of anniversaries. A century ago, in 1921, the National Unemployed Workers Movement was established. Half a century ago, in 1971, the shipyard workers of the Clyde laid down their challenge built on unity to the Tory government on the principle of the right to work and took over the Clydeside shipyards for a year long work-in.

Ten years ago Unite Community was set up to provide organisation and power for those out of work or in precarious employment.

The common theme in all was, and is, organisation and courage — that, when united, those out of work, or threatened with loss of work, have the power to change their conditions and advance the interests of all workers.

When the National Unemployed Workers Movement was set up in 1921, unemployment was at 10 per cent across Britain. In some communities in Scotland, previously dependent on war work, a third of all workers were unemployed.

Organisation provided them with the strength and courage to demand that local authorities provide a viable level of subsistence — in turn giving some local councillors on the left, like those in the Vale of Leven and Fife, the strength to confront and defy the right-wing government in Westminster.

Fifty years ago this summer the challenge laid down by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) was above all a challenge of ideas. It demonstrated workers could run their industries and could rally a wider movement for a new conception of society.

This was the beauty of Jimmy Reid’s challenge to “lame duck economics,” of Jimmy Airlie’s strategy for wider unity, of Sammy Barr’s concept of the work-in — and the courage of rank and file workers like Betty Kennedy, switchboard operator in the UCS telephone exchange, who unplugged the management and ensured that the combine’s telecommunications thenceforth served the workers.

Ten years ago, in 2011, Unite Community was formed — and seven years ago in Scotland I became involved myself as community co-ordinator.

Since then we have seen the campaign against benefit sanctions and the fight-back against zero-hours contracts — taking on and exposing Mike Ashley so far as to affect his share values and forcing him to respond. This then developed into the campaign for Decent Work Zones.

Unite Young Members linked up with the STUC to establish the Better than Zero campaign along with young trade unionists from across the movement. The Unite Hospitality Campaign then started to build a community base and is now established across Scotland — with a fighting chance of reversing the losses of this pandemic and the challenges the industry faces.

This saw trade unionists, both industrial and community, campaigning across Scotland to stop the closure of local bank branches that served otherwise isolated communities, successfully campaigning to save bus routes in the “haud the bus” campaign and then link up with the Get Glasgow Moving for the public ownership of bus services.

None of this has been in isolation. It has involved building links with the STUC, local trade union councils and community campaign groups. It has meant being in town centres, holding events in town halls on introductions to economics and showings of I, Daniel Blake — eighty of them as well as many other events.

It has also meant bringing the trade union movement generally out into the public — with local union branches helping with street stalls, local festivals like the Paisley Sma Shot Day and making donations to food, clothes and toy banks.

This work continued under Covid-19. It was Unite’s national campaign, with Scotland well to the fore, that helped secure the £20 uplift in universal benefit. It must continue now in the aftermath of Covid — keeping the £20 and introducing a fairer system — as with the July 1 joint action with People’s Assembly, demanding benefit levels to match the continuing level of need.

It was Reverend Jesse Jackson who said, “If we build our principles first, our politics will fall into place.” It took me until 2018 to realise that Unite Community was not about “identifying leaders” — it was about building courage and collective understanding politically. Without it “leaders” can do nothing.

It has been through building courage and empowering people that Unite Community has been part of building so many prominent figures in our movement.

Again this has never been in isolation. But together we have played our role in building for the future.

And this is where Unite’s history project has come in. This initiative of Jim Mowatt, head of Unite Education, is about recovering the knowledge of this past courage and political understanding and using it now.

We remember again the trade unionists in Rolls Royce East Kilbride, in Yarrows shipyard and the Rosyth dockyards who defied the law to stop armaments for fascist Chile, to the extent of ensuring the Hunter jets that strafed the presidential palace in 1973 were grounded for good.

This took courage. It also took politics. It wasn’t pay and conditions. This was workers’ action on morals and principles. This is the real history of our movement.

Fourteen years ago I joined Unite. Soon I was a young shop steward and then chair of the Unite Scotland youth committee. But it was involvement in Unite Community that made me understand the potential of the trade union movement collectively for wider leadership in the community. It brings together our industrial branches with people in streets and homes. It builds solidarity and politics.

Its anniversary this year stands alongside that of the National Unemployed Workers Movement and of the UCS. Unite Community West of Scotland have seen the importance, along with veterans from UCS, of marking the 50th anniversary of the work in by commissioning a enamel badge. Designed by Bob Starrett, chief propagandist of the UCS work-in, it brings forward its timeless message and reminder: unity is strength.