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Volume Five 1974 - 1992   

To Zenith to Nadir?

    

Mrs Thatcher as Leader from 1975 of the Conservative Party and then as Prime Minister from May 1979 to November 1990, haunts this period as Harbinger and then as the Hammer for Neo-liberalism – a term unknown at that time to most socialists.  

Trade union membership accelerated in the late 60’s through to the very early 80’s.  The TGWU boasted 2.2 million members in 1980 up from 1.7 million in 1974: by 1992 TGWU membership had declined to just over 1 million.

The springboards of two victorious miners’ strikes, two Labour successes in the General Elections of 1974, and the innovative and successful Upper Clyde Shipbuilders ‘work-in’ created a confidence in the organised working class, which had come to believe that socialist change was just around the corner.

Events in September the eleventh (9/11) 1973 in Chile had yet to really register.  Labour Governments in the mid 70’s responded to Global crises by taking a begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund; thus jettisoning the Left’s ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’. 

Repealing the genuinely vicious legal attacks on Trade Unionism and the creation  of Health and Safety Legislation (which was the most radical in the world), were insufficient to sustain the “Social Contract” between  the Labour Government and the Trade Unions in the late 1970’s – leading to the ‘Winter of Discontent’.

Thatcher, ‘Neo-liberalism’, salami - sliced legal enactments against unions and cruel tool of unemployment created the economic and political conditions to decimate trade union membership.  Defensive trade union struggles could not stop the domino- effect on steelworkers, automotive workers, miners, printers and dockers.  The corpses of collective organisations, especially trade unions, littered the 1980’s.

The big industrial unions managed decline, using mergers to preserve numbers in individual unions, but could not disguise the dramatic loss in overall TUC membership.

Nevertheless, fight backs were common place and heartening in the Local Authorities, on the streets, ‘People’s March for Jobs’ and of course the Poll Tax.

 

 

Target 35: The Case for the 35Hr Week by Jack Jones (1976)

Transport & General Workers Union Pamphlet

 

Trade unions have always existed to secure better conditions of employment and a higher quality of life, thus a shorter working week is a high priority at any time.

A resolution for the 35-hour working week was unanimously adopted by the TUC in 1972; the idea was preceded by Tom Mann organising strikes for the 8-hour working day in 1889. This pamphlet described the seriousness of growing unemployment, the displacement of workers due to automation and the lack of future prospects in work for the younger generations. It also analysed how shorter working weeks, as trialled in some European countries, generally seemed to increase levels of employment and encourage efficiency. In his summation, Jones set a target that by 1979, all industries should adopt no more than 35 working hours in a week.