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GCHQ 40: the ban on trade unions in 1984
Ahead of next weekend’s march and rally, HUGH LANNING explains why the GCHQ struggle and eventual victory means so much to the British labour movement
The 13th Anniversary GCHQ March moves through Cheltenham, January 1997, to commemorate when trades unions fought against the government's decision in 1984 to band trades union membership at the communications and eavesdropping centre
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
RAMZY BAROUD decries the rats of Gaza, the rodent and human type. Both abound as profiteering from tragedy reaches obscene levels
IN 1984 no-one had heard of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the government’s then-secret intelligence-gathering centre — let alone that the staff were represented by trade unions.
All that changed on January 25 1984, when Margaret Thatcher’s government announced its decision to impose a total ban on trade union membership at GCHQ.
The decision came without warning or consultation, and it provoked a sustained campaign unparalleled in modern labour history. It ended in 1997 when, in one of its first decisions, the Labour government overturned the ban.
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