Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Trade unions at GCHQ – the principle was the thing
NICK WRIGHT revisits the events of 40 years ago and the battle to overcome the ban on trade unions at the government’s communications and eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham
The Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)

OCTOBER 1988 saw a rash of walkouts in hundreds of places where civil servants worked.

Four union members at a little-known government facility, the Government Communications Head Quarters, had been sacked on orders emanating from prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

The four were among a key group of 14 members drawn from the very many specialists working at the state agency responsible for intercepting and analysing electronic and radio communications. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Protesters march as they participate in a demonstration part of a nation-wide protest and general strike against the war in Gaza, in Bologna, Italy, September 22, 2025. Photo: Guido Calamosca/LaPresse via AP
Features / 25 September 2025
25 September 2025

NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too

A St George's Cross flag on the A1206 in the Isle of Dogs, August 18, 2025
Features / 11 September 2025
11 September 2025

When the latest round of hysteria reached our town, we successfully organised and stopped it reaching the asylum centre gates as the far right had planned —  but we need to have answers for the local residents who joined their demonstration, writes NICK WRIGHT

Monica Crowley, White House chief of protocol (obstructed at left) greets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, upon arriving to meet with President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, August 18, 2025
Features / 28 August 2025
28 August 2025

US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT

Guillaume Périgois
Politics / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT

Similar stories
OPPORTUNITY BECKONS: BRICS member states family photograph - In the shadow of the Sugarloaf Mountain - during the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on July 6 2025. (L to R) Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, Crown Prince of UAE Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto, President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, Premier of China Li Qiang, Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed, P
The Future / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

ROGER McKENZIE expounds on the motivation that drove him to write a book that anticipates a dawn of a new, fully liberated Africa – the land of his ancestors

DISTINGUISHED: Portrait of Hans Hess c1962 (photographer unk
Features / 23 November 2024
23 November 2024
PAUL MACGEE highlights a new series of books that brings together a treasure trove of writings by a Jewish Marxist art historian who offers readers a refreshingly grounded theory of art
Features / 19 October 2024
19 October 2024
BEN CHACKO sees an exhibition that charts the memorable struggle to have union rights restored to workers at the intelligence hub GCHQ in Cheltenham
World / 27 September 2024
27 September 2024