ON FRIDAY December 1 at the 45th anniversary of the release of the Pentonville Five, when tens of thousands took to the streets to protest at their imprisonment, there was a call to link that working-class victory with the trade union struggles of today.

Since then the tide of Tory anti-union laws has helped create the conditions where workers are increasingly exposed to poor quality, low-paid and precarious employment and fears of victimisation are a major barrier to trade union membership and activism.

However, at the September 2017 TUC important motions from the NASUWT and CWU became policy and so the TUC now recognises the need to return to the organisation and activism employed in earlier stages of trade unionism.

It is committed to leading a major transformative project to create a new model of British trade unionism which will include:

• co-ordinating solidarity and supporting workers in dispute – to help workers win and raise the consciousness of all involved
• flexibility of organisation and local activism to influence the gig economy, using modern methods to win the next generation of representatives and members
• ensuring appropriate training of activists

Trade union membership fell over the last year by 275,000. The extent of the problem is underplayed by the government for obvious reasons, but it’s also little understood and often underestimated within the labour movement.

The days when the likes of Derek Robinson and hundreds of shop stewards were active amongst a workforce totalling more than 100,000 are long gone. Britain today has upwards of 1.4 million out of work, 1.6 million working for agencies, 1.6 million on “precarious” temporary and zero-hours contracts and as many as five million working self-employed, many barely managing to make ends meet.