unions


‘union question’ began to dominate from the mid 1960s. Union leaders like Joe Gormley of the


National Union of Mineworkers, Jimmy Reid of the shipbuilders and Jimmy Airlie of the engineers’ union were household names. Polls showed people thought Jack Jones of the TGWU was more powerful than the prime minister. Harold Wilson’s Labour government set up a


royal commission on unions to decide whether union power was a good thing. Its verdict was like that of a Scottish court: not proven, either way. The Tories were under no illusions. After his victory in 1970, premier Edward Heath brought in the ill-fated Industrial Relations Act, with a National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) to enforce the law. A Trades Union Congress boycott effectively stymied the legislation, but not before five striking dockers had been jailed for contempt of the NIRC. The TUC’s threat of a general strike – the first since 1926 – got them released. The miners’ strike of 1974 triggered a general


election that returned Wilson to Number 10, and pro-union employment secretary Michael Foot repealed the hated act. But, after the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978-79, Maggie Thatcher swept into power on the back of hostility to the unions. Everything changed. The years of social partnership, with union leaders sitting on the National Economic Development Council, ended. The days of union peers and knights of the realm sitting on the TUC general council petered out. To Thatcher, we were ‘the enemy within’. From 1981, laws curtailing union


activity were passed virtually every year, each more stringent than the last. The closed shop was banned, pre-strike postal ballots were


imposed, and union funds were opened up to legal assault. The final chapter was written in 1984, with the


crushing of Arthur Scargill’s NUM in the strike for jobs and the 1986 destruction of the print unions in the Wapping dispute. Dozens of journalists on The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World were sacked, along with 5,500 printworkers. Some never worked on the nationals again. It was the nadir of trade union fortunes. After


Wapping, the received wisdom was that you could not win a strike. Like all conventional wisdom, it was only partly true, as refuse collectors in Leeds and social workers in Doncaster proved with their successful dispute. It isn’t easy to win, but it’s not mission


impossible. After 12 strikes in one year, rail workers on Greater Anglia this summer declared victory in their campaign to keep guards on trains. The number of days lost through disputes is at an all-time low. Unions have had to adapt to the Tories’ legal straightjacket that was only slightly loosened by Tony Blair’s New Labour governments. Legal paths to union recognition was the biggest change. The NUJ has been prominent in using the new law, but many industrial employers still stop at nothing to keep unions out. Europe has proved to be an unexpected source of support. In the 1975, the TUC opposed UK entry to the Common Market.After the ‘Yes’ vote, British union leaders took their places on EEC bodies alongside European unions. Thereafter, we benefited from some European reforms: the working time directive, rights for part-time and


agency workers and the like. Theresa May has promised that, after Brexit, there will be no rowing-back from those gains. Rightly suspicious of the old enemy, the unions look to Labour MPs to hold May to her word. The Manchester congress demanded a Brexit deal that meets union demands on jobs, rights at work and peace in Northern Ireland – and a people’s vote to decide if it does or not. Unions have taken Labour in a new direction, which has yet to undergo its test, in a post-Brexit general election. The mosaic of 1968 has disappeared. Most


smaller unions have gone, subsumed into one of the Big Three: Unite, Unison or the GMB. New growth has been largely in the professions, particularly public services like the NHS. At the historic Manchester congress, issues such as sexual harassment dominated the workplace agenda. Some things just never go away, just like the unions themselves. The Musicians’ Union highlighted adverts for ‘attractive women violinists’ , unbelievable in the 21st century. I joined the NUJ on my first day in the job as a reporter on the now-defunct Northern Despatch in Darlington in July 1965. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Everybody was a member. It is harder now, not just because employers are hostile and quick to hire union-busting lawyers, but also because workers are dispersed in penny packets, locked into zero-hours and short-term contracts. Employment has grown at the expense of ‘proper’ jobs, making it much more difficult to organise. But the spirit of the pioneers who met at the


Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester in 1868 to form a parliament of the workers lives on, and every new generation finds out for itself the wisdom of getting together for the common good.


1968 The Royal Commission on Trade Unions, set up by Harold Wilson, returned a ‘not proven’ verdict on whether union power was ‘a good thing’.


1984-85 A national strike over jobs by Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers was defeated by the Thatcher Government


1986 Print unions were crushed by Thatcher in the Wapping dispute in which 5,500 print workers were sacked by Rupert Murdoch.


2013 NUJ member Frances O’Grady became the first woman general secretary of the TUC in succession to Brendan Barber.


theJournalist | 15


JESS HURD DAVID HICKES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO AJAX NEWS RICHARD MILDENHALL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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