Having been general secretary, first at the Community and Youth Workers Union and then at General Federation of Trade Unions, since 1987, you are retiring as Britain’s longest-serving general secretary. There have been significant changes in the movement over that time. What do you see as some of the strengths and weaknesses?

Unions are now more popular than at any time I have known. The public are behind the pay struggles in ways they never have been before. Remember in 1976 the big unions and TUC called a conference to argue that there should be pay restraint to avoid a spiral of inflation. No-one believes these days that higher wages are to blame for the cost of living crisis. 

There’s ebb and flow of overt struggle but I’m minded of what one of the leaders of the revolt in 1381 said: “In time of peace, be not all men at war with them that be rich.”