Celebrating the New Left Majority

By Jeremy Dear (guest editor)

The British trade union movement has seen a welcome change over the past few years.

A series of general secretaries, officers and executives have been elected who are genuinely committed to campaigning against poverty wages and privatisation and for rights at work and an end to anti-trade union legislation that the British Labour government has pretty much left in place from the Thatcher years.

This issue of Red Pepper looks at various union campaigns, festivals and organising techniques.

Jeremy Dear celebrates the uniquely holistic approach to workplace, cultural and consumer activism of the Battersea and Wandsworth TUC (BWTUC).

20 years ago the BWTUC established the Workers Beer Company, which mobilises 3000 young people every year to work behind the bars at festivals like Glastonbury. It owns and runs the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham. It employs union organisers to run its high street Organising Centre in Tooting. It has worked with the GMB to establish the fair trade clothing brand Ethical Threads. And in the past two years it has launched the Glastonbury Left Field - an attempt to bring trade unionism to a new audience.

Geoff Martin explains the beginnings of the Left Field and how with larger sponsorship in the second year they were able to expand the scale. Billy Bragg was a supporter and the program included Anti-Nazi League spin off Love Music Racism. The program included music, debates film and the launch of a Roadcrew Provident Syndicate (RPS) designed to protect band's roadies.

Also in Red Pepper, Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communications Workers Union outlines what the thinking and plans are of the so-called "awkward squad" of union leaders. To many his comments on defending the public sector against privatisation and public-private partnerships, employments rights, expansive economic policy to deal with poverty and housing shortages may seem minimal but it shows how far Labour governments have drifted to accepting the economic dogma of the economic rationalists.

Andy Gilchrist, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union outlines the pressures in his union to drop any connections with the Labour Party, particularly in the wake of the long running dispute the Labour Party waged on that union.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union explains that Scotland is showing the way for unionists, using the space offered by their separate Parliament to push a broader agenda.

More in Red Pepper. no 111, September 2003.