General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
Latest editorial
Putting the class politics into union-building
MARTIN SMITH revisits some core organising principles that were to the fore in battles of the ’90s and which remain just as relevant today
Trade unions 8.9.23
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
OVER the last 30 years there has been a slow, patchy, inconsistent and faltering return to an organic bottom-up organising culture in British trade unions, based primarily on a renewed understanding of the dynamics of class conflict at work.
Truthfully, this evolution was not assisted in any major fashion by the Labour government of 1997 to 2010, whose focus was on individual rather than collective employment rights that could be organised around, enforced as they were on a case-by-case basis through employment tribunals.
With the prospect of another Labour government, unions must learn the lessons of our failure to capitalise on the last one to grow our organisations.
More from this author
Martin Smith speaks to general secretary of the App Drivers and Couriers Union ZAMIR DRENI about his members’ fight against the nefarious methods of exploitation by shadowy app giants like Uber and Bolt
MARTIN SMITH says unions must be proactive if Labour's promises are to be turned into tangible gains for workers
As the prospect of a Labour government becomes increasingly likely, MARTIN SMITH looks at the lessons for unions from the 1997-2010 era and focuses on what our core goals should be today
Former head of organising at GMB MARTIN SMITH puts forward eight principles to capitalise on the current wave of militancy
