Responsibility for the defeats and failures of the last two decades lies firmly with the leaders of the unions and the TUC. To say this is not to minimise the problems that the unions face in the current climate. But it is to assert that there is another way forward than continued decline. The current trade union leadership has failed to mount any effective resistance to the combined impact of mass unemployment, government policy and the employers' offensive. It have allowed individual groups of workers to remain isolated when they have taken action and has refused to generalise struggles or organise effective solidarity: The miners' strike of 1984-5 was isolated by the failure of the TUC and individual unions who failed to organise effective solidarity and support. This followed on from a similar failure the autumn before to support NGA print workers in the dispule at Warrington with Eddie Shah. It was itself followed by similar refusal to take action in support of print workers at Wapping, or of scafarers in their dispute with P&O, or of dockers when the Dock Labour Scheme was abolished. In this way the union leaderships have played a key role in the progressive weakening of the British trade union morement. The refusal of union leaderships to support the struggles of workers is not confined to Britain. What is notable in Britain, howerer, is that apart from specific disputes like the miners' strike, and the presence of strong left formations in some unions such as the NUT, there has been relatively little generalised opposition to the policies of the leaders.
In France and Italy, in contrast, we have seen radical alternatives emerging outside the main union confederations. In Italy there are the examples of the COBAS (or base committees) in the public sector, the Rank and File Union Representation (RDB), the Unitary Federation of Metal Workers (FL.MU) and the Self-Managed Workers Union (SLAI-COBAS), which originated in Alfa Romeo but has now grown considerably: In France there have been the rank and file 'coordinations' which emerged in the transport and health workers' strikes of 1988, the Unitary Trade Union Federation (FSU) which is based in the education sector, and independent unions such as SUD-Post Office/Telecom, SUD-Rall,
and SNUI (tax collectors). As well as such independent initiatives, oppositional groupings have emerged within established confederations. Examples are the Essere Sindicato (Union Way) movement within the Italian CGIL, which has now grown into the Alternativa Sindicale (Union Alternative) grouping, the "critical sector' in the Spanish Comisiones Obreras (Workers' Commissions) and the Union Opposition in the Swedish trade union federation, which recently won the union elections in the Volvo plant in Gothenburg.
What all of these various initiatives pose is the question of leadership in the union movement, and the need for an alternative leadership which will resist the altacks that workers face and support their struggles. This question is similarly urgent in Britain, yet there has been little sustained development of such an alternative in this country. What alternatives there have been have been very much posed at the level of individual unions, rather than being generalised to the movement as a whole. They are very important but they are not a substitute for such a generalised development. This situation reflects the long tradition of trade unions in Britain, the first country to industrialise and the major imperial power of the 19th and early 20th century. The result of this has been a particularly strong position for the union leadership, which is fundamentally integrated into the political and social system, and a correspondingly weak tradition of alternatives to that leadership. However, this only makes the task of dereloping such alternatives more important.
To challenge the existing leaderships of the unions necessarily opens up sharp debates about the way forward. In particular, there is the question of whether to remain within existing union federations and act as an opposition within them, or to set up alternative structures. The answer to this must in the last analysis depend on the concrete situation laced by trade unionists in a particular country: There are obviously differences between a country like Britain where there is a single trade union centre, the TUC, to which all genuine unions are affiliated, and countries like France and Italy with competing centres based in large part on political affiliation. However, the principle of building the broadest possible movement among trade unionists to force the existing leaders into defending workers' interests, and to replace them if they do not, must take the highest priority. Given the fact that almost all trade unionists look in the first instance to the TUC and to its existing affiliated unions to support them, the key issue is the construction of an alternative to the current leadership within those unions, rather than the development of new unions. However, this is not to downplay the significance of the growth of new union confederations elsewhere, as an indication of the need for alternatives to the current leadership.