Italian workers including members of the USB union were part of a general strike for Palestine (Photo: @si_cobasnaz/X)
Trade unions are hugely important for building resistance to oppression, climate change and inequality.
But the British labour movement sometimes seems to spend more time commemorating the glorious defeats of the past than supporting the struggles of today.
Workers in hospitality and retail are less likely to join unions than the miners, rail workers and engineers of the past for whom union organisation was part of working life.
And nostalgia for past days of union militancy too often excuses passivity from today’s union leaders.
Capitalism constantly transforms how we live. The jobs that shaped working class communities for generations are destroyed and new types of employment that demand different skills emerge.
But all workers share one thing—collective organisation is the only power they have.
Throughout the history of the movement there have been times when downturns in struggle have been followed by explosions of resistance, often drawing in groups of workers who had not been unionised before. These have gone beyond making economic demands and started to raise the question of how to win system change.
The 1799 Combination Act criminalised “Unlawful Combinations of Workmen”. The act drove trade unionism underground until 1824, when unions were legalised but severely restricted.
Artisans excluded less skilled workers from their trade societies. But they could not hold back the new methods of manufacturing goods.
In the 1830s, workers broke from the artisan model and organised across different trade unions. The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, set up in 1834, organised unskilled and women workers.
The first general strike in Britain in 1842 did not just fight against pay cuit also demanded greater democracy.
The strikers were influenced by the Chartist movement for democratic rights.
Despite these general unions and political strikes, many of the first socialists dismissed strikes as too narrow.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed a radically different approach.
They celebrated the power of workers, who “must protest against every reduction in their pay because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not be made to bow to economic and social circumstances, but these conditions ought to yield to them as human beings.”
Striking challenged the right of the capitalists to make profit through exploiting workers and replaced competition between workers with unity.
After the defeat of Chartism, the trade union movement grew in size and social weight, but it became more institutionalised and focused on skilled workers and crafts.
The trade union leaders increasingly acted as a distinct social group, whose interests were not the same as those of their members. Their role was to negotiate between workers and bosses, and to keep strikes under their control.
Engels berated the trade union leaders who organised only skilled workers and who venerated Victorian respectability. These complacent union leaders were met by a challenge from a totally unexpected quarter—young, working class women of Irish descent.
In 1888, women working at the Bryant and May match factory in east London walked out. These women were seen as irrelevant to the old union —but they formed their own strike committee and won their demands.
Their example inspired others. A year later, their husbands, brothers and cousins organised a strike in the London docks. The dockers were forced to fight each other every morning for casual jobs.
But Engels celebrated the way the dockers, “a mass of broken-down humanity”, united 100,000 workers and could “strike fear into the hearts of the mighty dock companies”.
After five weeks, the workers won their “dockers’ tanner”—a minimum wage—and improved working conditions.
Most importantly, they inspired other non-unionised workers to strike in a movement that became known as New Unionism.
The new unions were led by revolutionaries including Eleanor Marx. They welcomed almost all workers who had been excluded by the old craft unions and they adopted militant strategies.
The new unions formed in the 1880s, including the forerunner of Unite and the General and Municipal and Boilers Makers union—the GMB—still organise millions of workers.
But the movement was crushed by an employers’ counter offensive.
Robert Tressell, who died in 1911, complained in his novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists about the apathy of workers.
But by the time the novel was published, a new wave of labour revolt had swept across Britain.
As historian Ralph Darlington writes, the Great Unrest of 1910–14 was one of the most sustained, dramatic and violent explosions of industrialm militancy in British history.
The revolt was led by unskilled and semi-skilled workers not previously in unions who acted independently of the union leaders. These “insurrectionary strikes” were driven forward by young workers, both men and women, who refused to doff their caps to the bosses.
Membership in unions rose from 2.5 million in 1910 to over 4 million in 1914. The movement was only quelled by the outbreak of the First World War.
Every period of industrial peace and moderate trade unionism incubates the next round of militant struggle. And for every group of workers whose industry is destroyed, workers in new sectors of the economy are forced to get organised.
In the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, new industries developed. So did traditions of unofficial action and workplace militancy, based not on union officials but on shop stewards—workplace reps—accountable to their members.
New groups of workers, particularly migrant and women workers, joined the struggle—bringing their own demands for dignity and equality.
In the early 1970s, a Tory government tried to wage a war on this organised working class. This sparked a working class revolt using militant tactics—unofficial strikes, illegal solidarity actions and occupations.
In July 1971, workers at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupied their shipyard to stop its closure. Hundreds of thousands struck in support and a wave of occupations spread, drawing in both organised and unorganised workers.
The shipbuilders forced the government into a humiliating retreat.
The traditions established by the dockers in the 1880s were still alive nearly 100 years later. Many of the London dockworkers were in their early 20s when they joined a rebellion against the government in July 1972.
Five dockers were jailed in Pentonville prison for picketing non-union labour brought in to replace them.
Within hours, dockers shut down major ports. And solidarity strikes spread to engineering, steel, transport, councils and one of the biggest workplaces in Europe—Heathrow airport.
Some 250,000 workers struck. Five days after they were jailed, the Pentonville Five were released.
The great working class rebellions of the past all involved new sections of workers who had little sense of their own power before they threw themselves into action.
Once decent jobs in health and education have become proletarianised in ways that have provoked union organisation and strikes. There are huge numbers of workers in Heathrow and Gatwick airports, in hospitals, distribution hubs and call centres.
Any strike over working conditions in a heatwave or for pay restoration will win solidarity and inspire others.
The match women of today might be found among the 345,000 people who work for Tesco. The dockers of today might be riding Deliveroo bikes or driving delivery trucks.
When trade unionists join campaigns against racism and other social movements, they bring numbers and social weight. And political activism can begin to transform the unions into powerful, political institutions capable of beating back the bosses and challenging their own leaders.
Trade union leaders can support progressive causes, which opens doors to winning members to join protests. But the crucial question for socialists is how to build support for radical ideas at the base of the unions.
Recently we have started to see examples of workers taking action in support of Palestine.
Last September, Italy was rocked by a 24-hour general strike involving half a million people. They demanded an end to Italy’s complicity in the genocide. Ports were blocked in Genova, Trieste, Venice, Livorno and Salerno.
Workers have the power to disrupt production across Italy and stop the flow of weapons to Israel. That’s the trade unionism we need to fight for.
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