Conclusions

Abstract

This book began with Nicola and her evocation of a ‘closed world’ and disavowal of consciousness and identity in spite of her activism; it ends with Steve, who suggests the discovery of a more open world and an awakened consciousness. They illuminate to varying degrees the gap between activism and consciousness. All the activists featured in this book are in practice sustaining collective organisation against the stream. This is in spite of the contraction of collective bargaining and increased focus upon individual rights as the basis of employment regulation, often crushing activism beneath the weight of individual casework and the emotional injuries of class (Sennett and Cobb, 1972) that workplace representatives deal with on a daily basis, limiting their time and energy for organising. These activists operated as a restraint on the reassertion of managerial power in the workplace and ULRs even asserted some new space for worker interest in the face of this.

It is quite a thing being in this environment I find myself watching things like Question Time and stuff like that on telly late at night. My wife sort of questions us on doing that, she says ‘why have you started this?’ ‘I don’t know’, I says, ‘it’s just that I get sort of drawn into the debates and the conversations that people are having’ which is something that I never, ever used to do. I don’t know whether that’s right or wrong or geeky or what [laughing]. It’s just I never used to watch that programme, you know. And I’m more opinionated. I mean my wife, she’s opinionated as well, but even things on the news and things like, you know, we’ll sort of have conversations about that, quite interesting stuff we never ever used to watch or things we never ever used to do. The union, it’s the union that’s sort of brought my interests, broadened my interests I would say — that’s a better word. It’s broadened my interests.

Steve, activist in statutory recognition campaign