Workers' Liberty

The Trades Union Congress is campaigning for trade union freedom from the shackles of anti union laws. It is backing a Early Day Motion in Parliament, the Trade Union Freedom Bill. (EDMs do not get time to be debated in Parliament, but serve to "flag up" issues). The TUC has made the campaign the theme of the London May Day demonstration.

These moves must be warmly welcomed by all those who want to see the abolition of the many anti-union laws that make effective industrial action difficult or impossible within the law.

Every single bit of the strike action that has recently made the French government retreat would be unlawful in Britain.

Under "the most restrictive labour laws in the western world", as Tony Blair smugly called them in 1997 while promising to keep this Tory legacy, it's also unlawful for London Underground employees to take industrial action in support of Underground cleaners (employed by sub-contractors).

When teachers at many schools refused to cross picket lines during the local government workers' strike against pension cuts on 28 March, that was unlawful too.

We sometimes bend the edges of this unjust law, as the teachers did. But it is hard to break right through it. And it gives a permanent excuse to every union leader to limit action.

The TUC has now started moving on the issue, rather timidly, because of the Gate Gourmet dispute.

In August 2005 airline catering workers at Gate Gourmet were sacked en masse - on the grounds that they had struck illegally - and BA baggage handlers at Heathrow struck (also illegally) in their support.

For a week last August the scandal of the anti-union laws banning the basic solidarity our movement was built on was front-page and TV news.

In the event the baggage handlers and the TGWU were not, or did not feel, strong enough to break right through the anti-union laws, and the Gate Gourmet workers lost. But the struggle still pushed the issue of the anti-union laws upfront in a way it had not been before.

The TGWU raised the issue at both the TUC and Labour Party conferences in autumn 2005.

Labour Party conference voted to repeal some anti union laws and thus make some solidarity action legal. The New Labour leadership immediately announced that they would ignore the policy.

The TUC conference voted to run a high profile campaign against the anti-union laws.

We should build support for the TUC campaign, while not forgetting its limitations, or the fact that it would never have started were it not for grass-roots pressure, including the brave direct action of the Heathrow baggage handlers.