Skip to main content
Why do we pretend we can rely on those we don’t elect to solve our problems?
Morning Star editor Ben Chacko interviews DOUG NICHOLLS, Britain’s longest-serving trade union general secretary and probably one of only a handful of trade unionists at TUC Congress this year who was at the 1988 congress when Jacques Delors delivered his infamous speech to gain trade union support for the European Union’s new integration plans and single market
Doug Nicholls, general secretary of the GFTU

WHAT do you recall about the context in which the 1988 TUC met?

The once workshop of the world had been closed down. The shock and awe of the destruction of industry and coal and their leadership unions was unprecedented in world history. 

Steel, engineering, docks, shipbuilding, print — all savaged in the wanton act of vandalism of Thatcher. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Burnt cars remain in the middle of a street following the re
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
Ben Chacko asks NIZAR TRABULSI of the now banned Syrian Communist Party (Unified) to explain the country's turbulent, and violent, post-Assad scene
Delegates chat as they leave the Great Hall of the People af
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
From renewable tech to alternatives to the dollar, BEN CHACKO was encouraged by an optimistic meeting held by the China Media Group this week
Similar stories
Alex Salmond speaks at the SNP conference in Glasgow, Octobe
Features / 17 October 2024
17 October 2024
JOHN FOSTER examines how the late SNP leader shifted the party leftwards and upwards, bringing Scottish independence to the forefront while fundamentally failing to address deeper issues of class and corporate capture
France's President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he delivers a
Features / 10 October 2024
10 October 2024
The French president and the European Central Bank have identified ‘more of the same’ neoliberal agenda as the answer to the EU’s woes – but can post-Brexit Britain grasp the opportunity to reject continued austerity, asks NICK WRIGHT
European Union flags wave in the wind as pedestrians walk by
Features / 25 July 2024
25 July 2024
As Starmer hints at closer ties, MARTIN HALL warns of the dangers of creeping alignment and calls for a renewed socialist case for independence from Brussels, especially over the EU’s constraints on economic planning
LABOUR'S TO DO LIST: Sort out strike rights and collectice b
Features / 17 July 2024
17 July 2024
Professor Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC examine the new deal for workers outlined in the King's Speech and what should follow it