This pamphlet does not attempt to set out all the answers to the issues confronting the unions, but to initiate a process of debate and discussion on the way forward. We hope that readers will want to join us in this process and in activity arising from it to restore the fortunes of the movement. There are a number of conclusions arising from the points set out above.
* Changes in the workforce and the economy do not mean that trade unionism is finished. They do mean that the trade union movement has to be fundamentally restructured and revitalised.
* The working class is not dead, it is in a process of recomposition. However, the trade unions have not responded to this. The unions have changed before, in response to radical changes in the economy and in the nature of work. They can do so again. But this requires a conscious effort of will, to recruit, extend organisation, take up new issues and relate to new groups of workers. * The reconstruction of trade unionism requires breaking up the new realist stranglehold and a new kind of union leadership. The current leadership of the unions is both conservative, in that it is centrally concerned with preserving the union structures which currently exist and its own position within them, and exclusive, in that it ignores the struggle to extend union organisation and rights outside of the traditional membership. We need a new leadership, and a new kind of leadership, based not on preserving structures but on defending the membership and extending any gains made outwards continually to draw in as many new workers as possible.
* Trade unionism in the current period will only succeed as political trade unionism. The role of the law, the centrality of issues such as mass unemployment and the attack on the welfare state, and the nature of the political crisis both in Britain and in the rest of the industrialised countries, mean that even the most limited defence of workers' interests inescapably becomes political. Trade unions will only be revitalised if they are prepared to take up political questions and wage a political struggle.
* Trade unionism in the current period has to be internationalist. The globalisation and internationalisation of capital has to be met by a corresponding response from labour. In an economy dominated by multinationals and embarked on the process of European integration, the unions will only be successful if they extend their horizons beyond national boundanes.
* The issue of democracy within the unions is central. The experience of the past has shown that there is no way of ensuring an active and energetic trade unionism without democratic structures. Union democracy and free debate at branch level, at national conference and all points between is a precondition for rebuilding the trade union movement.
We hope that we have been able to show in this pamphlet that an alternative exists to continued decline. An internationalist, democratic movement of political trade unionism does have the potential to overcome the current difficulties and point the way to reconstructing the union movement and taking it forward to new struggles and victories.