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Building unity of action in the working-class movement
On the 125th anniversary of the founding of the General Federation of Trade Unions, GAWAIN LITTLE and EDDA NICOLSON talk about parallels with the struggles of today
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LAST month, the TUC held a special congress for the first time in over 40 years, to agree on a strategy to bring the movement together in the fight against the latest anti-union laws from the Conservative government.
This week 125 years ago, another special congress of the TUC was held in similar circumstances. In the aftermath of the collapse of the engineers’ strike for an eight-hour day, in the face of a seven-month-long lockout by the Employers’ Federation of Engineering Associations, it was clear that employers were organising to break the power of the trade union movement.
Separate negotiations conducted by some unions, in defiance of the stance taken by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and those who stood in solidarity with it, showed that the need to build greater unity in the trade union movement was pressing.
On January 24-26 1899, the TUC held a special congress which founded the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU). Its founding principles included an unambiguous commitment:
“To uphold the right of a combination of labour, to improve in every direction the general economic position and status of the workers by the inauguration of a policy that shall secure to them the power to determine the economic and social conditions under which they shall work and live, and to secure unity of action among all societies forming the federation.”
The aim was to move beyond the basic bond of solidarity which links together all working people in Britain and internationally in a common purpose and to build unity of action among trade unions working together in a federation.
This unity of action is once again what our movement needs if we are to face the existential threat posed by the 2023 Strikes (Minimum Services Level) Act and the raft of anti-union legislation adopted by successive governments from the 1970s onwards which have progressively chipped away at the power of organised labour.
It is not enough to leave the fight against the Strikes Act to those unions immediately affected as we know this will be the thin end of the wedge — the entire movement must respond.
It is not enough to simply fight for the repeal of the Strikes Act or the 2016 Trade Union Act — we must face up to the damage that has been done by over four decades of anti-union legislation, and the progressive decline of our movement. We must fight for the repeal of every piece of legislation that ties the hands of workers to organise.
It is not enough to fight a defensive fight to regain our right to organise as a class. In 1899, at its foundation, the GFTU set out a clear reason to build the unity of action of working people — to secure the power of working people to determine the economic and social conditions under which they shall work and live. This right is ours to claim.
Gawain Little is general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions. www.gftu.org.uk.
Dr Edda Nicolson is an industrial officer for PCS and a historian of trade unionism. Her forthcoming book on the early history of the GFTU is expected later this year.
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