CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a startling vision of contemporary Newport from a veteran photographer of the British working class
Latest editorial
Solving unions’ entrenched identity crisis
This is an important book dealing with an important subject of critical concern to all labour movement activists, writes MARY DAVIS
ALL CHANGE: Sharon Graham on the picket line with Weetabix workers
[Unite the union]
ANGUS REID recommends a very unusual documentary: a love story between two disillusioned journalists
In verse and polemic, the bard points out that he is a poet and musician, not a political party
MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence
Jane Holgate
Pluto Press, £16.99
TAKING her cue from Hobsbawm’s analysis of the decline in trade union power, Holgate seeks to address the same problem — namely why trade union power has continued to decline since 1979, and whether this means that trade unionism in the 21st century requires “a fundamental rethink about the structure and strategy of trade union organising.”
Holgate’s book centres on how trade unions organise and the main organising models that have been adopted during the past 40 or so years in response to union decline.
She analyses these models and finds them deficient in that they ignore what, for her, is the vital question — the locus of power.
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Labour movement history in Britain shows workers secured reforms through collective pressure and political representation, rather than being gifted from above, writes KEITH FLETT
MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale
In part II of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY explores how witch-hunting drives took hold in the Civil Service as the cold war emerged in the wake of WWII
