THE Scottish TUC voted today to work with affiliates to strengthen trades councils, revive lapsed ones and back the Together alliance against the far right.

The Trade Unions in Communities motion moved by Unison Scotland secretary Lilian Macer linked the rise of the far right to the disappearance of trade unions from many working-class communities.

Ms Macer said unions should be at the heart of campaigns for better housing or to keep local sports facilities open, “educating as we go, showing people who really make the decisions…

“It’s not the asylum-seekers in the local hotels. In theory it’s the politicians but all too often behind them are the developers and the property owners that are harming our communities.”

The Employment Rights Act gave many non-unionised workers rights they had never had before, she noted, but these would go unnoticed unless unions reached out into un-unionised sectors, giving workers the knowledge to assert their rights and growing the movement in the process.

Seconding, Drew Gilchrist of North Lanarkshire trades council said the crises of housing, healthcare, local authority funding and the rise of the far right were “not separate issues” and trades councils were critical to linking the “social, political and industrial struggles of the one [working] class.”

Unions would be critical to “bringing the industrial arguments any progressive alliance needs.” 

The Together alliance, which organised a half-million-strong march in London last month against the far right, “aims to mobilise anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-austerity and most importantly pro-worker forces to hit back at those who aim to degrade our rights and attack our neighbours and communities.”