The picket line at the Shelter office on Old St, London, was good. On the workers' third day of strike action - after a long pause, a lot of pressure from management, and a lot of foot-dragging or worse from full-time union officials - picket numbers were still buoyant, and the mood was defiant.
Old Street is the base for Shelter's top management, and employs a lot of agency workers, so some people did go into work. But, during the time I was on the picket line, only similar numbers to those on the 5 and 10 March strikes.
I hear that there was some weakening of the strike in other areas. That is to be expected in the circumstances. I believe victory is still possible if the action is continued, even with a bit of fraying. The reactions from some managers going in to the Old Street office suggest that they are a bit rattled and out of their depth: these are, after all, bosses who have never faced a strike before and never expected to face strikes.
The Old Street pickets later went on to the joint NUT-UCU-PCS demonstration from Lincolns Inn Fields to Westminster, which was excellent. Police estimated the numbers at six thousand, but it looked more. The crowd was young, energetic, and bubbly - mostly, so far as I could judge, young school teachers.
One young teaching assistant (a Unison member) I spoke to was excited and happy because teachers at her school, on the initiative of a couple of left-wing NUT activists, had organised a picket line, and she and other Unison members had refused to cross. I heard of another school where an NUT picket line was sustained by just one young teacher, yet some ancillary workers refused to cross.
However, it seems school picketing was generally weak, despite 769 schools in London (BBC figures) being at least partially open on the day. I heard of one school where the Unison members (teaching assistants, admin, etc.) met and voted not to go if the teachers had a picket line - and then the school NUT decided not to picket. There seems to have been no drive from the union tops or even from the union left "establishment" to organise pickets.
At the end-of-march rally in Central Hall, the Shelter strikers were not allowed to speak on the platform. That is particularly disappointing since the Shelter strike's effect depends above all on publicity, and part of the idea of scheduling the strike for 24th and 25th was to use the big rallies on the 24th to publicise the dispute.
Shelter workers told me that they had lobbied hard to get on the platform. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka wanted them to be allowed to speak, but they were blocked by the NUT, despite the NUT now being nominally under left-wing administration, with Christine Blower as acting general secretary, a left majority on the Executive, and well-known NUT leftist Alex Kenny chairing the Central Hall event.
An AWL member asked Christine Blower why the Shelter workers had been barred. "Oh, it's complicated. I can't remember all the details. I think in the end we agreed they could speak in Lincoln's Inn Fields" (true, though few would have heard them). What's complicated about it? No answer.
The NUT leadership did, however, find time on the Central Hall platform for TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, a man for whom a sell-out of combative workers is like a fine meal to a gourmet.
Same sort of picture with the union officials in the Shelter dispute. RMT deputy general secretary Patrick Sikorski, to his credit, came to offer support on the picket line; so did a couple of workers from neighbouring offices. But the officials from the Shelter strikers' own union, TGWU-Unite? TGWU-Unite general secretary Tony Woodley, whose office is only a short walk away? No sign of them.
The picket and the demonstration were, however, evidence of a new generation of young trade unionists who can shake up the old guard at the top of the unions, whether right-wing or nominally left-wing.