Trade unions are the strongest expression of working-class power in Britain today. From the advent of the capitalist mode of production and the exploitation it has inflicted on the people, workers have organised and formed trade unions out of solidarity and as a way to resist their exploitation and oppression. Through organising themselves into a mass democratic movement, workers have sought to address the power imbalances within the capitalist system.
Out of the many historic defeats along the way, union members have also successfully organised their class and created independent institutions that have helped to temper these losses. From working-class educational facilities, like libraries, and health care provision, union members have created communities and built up infrastructures of dissent that have supported them through tough times.
But today, communities are more fractured than ever, and the independent infrastructure built on solidarity that the working class previously had has been replaced by individualism, atomisation and charity. We should never look back at our history through rose tinted glasses, but we built a mass trade union movement in Britain before and we can do it again.
Rise believes that the working class in Britain can and must build that movement again!
The recent “hot strike summer” proved that workers in this country are tired of being on their knees and are ready to fight back. Union members in nearly every sector of the economy smashed the anti-trade union thresholds on strike ballots, some unions doing this multiple times, and we saw defiant picket lines across Britain.
But what the “hot strike summer” also showed us, was that while union members were up for the fight, they did not control the disputes or the unions. Their union leaderships did. And with a raft of below inflation pay deals put to members with a yes recommendation from union General Secretaries, it was clear the union bureaucracy/officialdom was not prepared to pursue the fight the members wanted.
So, what we need is to revitalise the union movement in Britain. We need an actual focus on how union members build power within their trade unions. We need a Lucas-like plan in every sector and we believe that an organised rank and file movement can create that plan.
Trade unions have provided a site and a basis for workers to harness and exercise their collective power. Through strikes, protests and boycotts trade unions have won important gains for workers.
However, trade unions have also internalised the logic of the capitalist system, they accept, without question, the right of capitalists to extract profit from workers, and fight only over the respective shares between worker and boss. In this way, trade unions which began as independent sites of working-class power, now often play the role of stabilising the existing system, by limiting workers’ demands to modest reforms within the confines of the status quo.
If trade unions are to play a leading role in rebuilding working class power, and in confronting the structural crises we face, then they will need to move beyond mere “bread and butter issues” and be reconstituted as offensive institutions of class war.
Rise will work to support and develop militant, rank and file trade union activities and structures, to better equip workers to fight and win.
If you agree with what Rise stands for, and if you are ready to get organised to build a better world, sign up to explore how you can best help support and build Rise.
Rise is an organisation that seeks to help empower the working class, both domestically and internationally, to build a socialist society free from the capitalist system which perpetuates exploitation, inequality and war.
Palestine will continue until the structures of apartheid and colonialism are dismantled. There will be peace, but only when Palestine is free, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Rise will work tirelessly to hasten the day.
The next UK Labour government under Keir Starmer is set to deliver a form of “do nothing conservatism” that lacks the vision to address the nation’s overlapping crises.
