What a decisive answer to all the cynics who had written off the labour movement in Britain. In scenes reminiscent of the late 1970s, scenes we were told would never be repeated in Blair's New Britain, more than a million local authority workers took strike action yesterday, the first national public sector stoppage in 20 years. The action by members of UNISON, the T&GWU and the GMB was described in the London Evening Standard as "the biggest strike in Britain since the 1926 General Strike".
This article deals with the scandalous so-called "Private Finance Initiative" in Britain. This process allows private companies to be involved in the building and running of what were formerly public services, such as hospitals, railways, and even schools. Mick Brooks shows quite clearly that the only people to benefit from PFI have been the fat cat capitalists who run the private firms.
This article is a follow-up to Britain's Summer of Discontent - An Earthquake in the British Labour Movement. The magnificent one million-strong strike of local authority workers on July 17 has forced important concessions out of the government. Anyone who still doubted the power of militant industrial action has been answered.
We have covered the dramatic changes taking place in the British trade unions in
previous articles. Here we examine these developments in the context of the 2002 TUC Congress which
takes place this week.
Today marks the end of the Trade Union Congress in Blackpool. It was a Congress that reflected the mood not
seen since the hey-days of the miners' strike of 1984-85. Since that time, we have had a decade and a half of
"new realism" and policies of (class) "collaboration" or "partnership", epitomised by the likes of Sir Ken Jackson,
ex-general secretary of the AEEU. Now a wind of change has hit the trade union movement.