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At the beginning of this month, as the first wave of strikes loomed the Blair
government was preparing to square up to the firefighters. "Picket lines
might be crossed… no options are being ruled out" Blair triumphantly
proclaimed. This was a blatant threat of attack. Such actions would have put the
government on a collision course with the unions. It shows how removed from
reality Blair is in arrogantly attempting to trample over the concerns of
working people. However they are in for a rude awakening.

Interview with Mick Shaw member of the FBU EC for the London Region: "We
have now reached the stage where the government and the employers are hiding
behind this so-called ‘independent inquiry’, and are refusing to engage in
negotiations. Our members see no alternative but to take industrial action in
order to persuade the employers to return to negotiations."

Industrial militancy in Britain is on the increase. It reflects a general
mood in the workplace that enough is enough. The Blair government is not only
confronting the first national firefighters’ strike in 25 years, but is facing
action on a number of other fronts. This has raised the spectre of another
Winter of Discontent similar to the one faced by the Callaghan government in
1978/79.

At this year’s annual Labour Party conference it was quite clear that
Blair is no longer looking as confident as only a few months ago.
He has had to swallow defeat in his own party, on a key issue: the
participation of private capital in the providing of public services
And he also came close to defeat on his plans to wage war on Iraq!
We are witnessing the first steps in what will prove to be a major turn-around
inside the Labour Party over the next period.

The planned national industrial action by the firefighters is the first for
25 years. It coincides with an increasing radicalisation in the union movement,
which is a culmination of years of bitterness and resentment built up by the
attacks on the wages and conditions of workers in general, and in the public
sector in particular. The FBU is playing a leading role in the struggle for
better wages in the public sector.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ, was one of several left union leaders to be newly elected to
the TUC General Council. Socialist Appeal spoke to him at the recent TUC
Conference.

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.

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.

We are appealing for messages of support and financial backing for 24 airport security staff in Belfast who have been sacked for striking against low pay and poor conditions. The sacked workers were prominent union activists, including two key shop stewards. The response of some of the higher-up officials in the T&GWU union has been woefully inadequate. Gordon McNeil, one of the sacked shop stewards, spoke to Socialist Appeal.

Socialist Appeal has published this special supplement as a contribution to the current debate surrounding union funding for the Labour Party. Socialist Appeal calls for trade unionists to not contract out, but to contract in, and reclaim the party that the unions created 100 years ago.

Following the example of the United States, Thatcher attempted to transform Britain into a deregulated low-wage economy. To the disgust of trade unionists, Blair is attempting to carry through a similar policy. Rob Sewell examines what has happened and argues for a radical alternative to Blairism.