Building Stronger Unions: A Review of Organising in Britain

Abstract

The launch of the TUC Organising Academy in 1998 was meant to herald a shift in resources and culture in British union movement. Moving the motion on ‘New Unionism’ at the 1997 Congress, USDAW’s general secretary spoke of the need for unions to go back to ‘basic, grass roots organising principles’, noting that:

The drop in … membership since 1979 has concentrated all our minds. [We] were like rabbits caught in the headlights of the on-coming Tory juggernaught. We’ve been content to respond by blaming the government, apathetic [or] ... part-time women workers and young people, the so-called ‘Thatcher’s children’. We now have to move from recrimination to determination. Organising has got to become an intrinsic and integral part of our union activity.