How strong is that pressure from below at the moment? Already, over six months of struggle, an enormous amount has been learned by a new generation, particularly by the workers who are at the forefront of the strikes.
That does not mean, however, that no marks of the previous decades remain.
Although wave after wave of workers are joining the strike movement, there are also sizeable sectors who have not managed to overcome the anti-union turnout thresholds.
The vast majority of workers who are on strike have never been out before, including many of those who are now stewards and reps.
The British working class is still at the beginning of a steep learning curve from which a new generation of trade union militants are being formed.
At this early stage, however, some of the traditions of the past have not been fully rebuilt.
In most cases pickets are seen as important but symbolic protests, rather than democratically-organised mass picketing aimed at persuading workers not to cross and enter the workplace.
The national strikes have also generally not been indefinite at this stage.
Clearly with a more farsighted and determined leadership, some of the strikes could have gone much further than they have so far.
For example, if the TUC had led a serious campaign to demand that the whole of the workers’ movement builds a mass strike fund to prevent any group of workers being starved back to work, it could have already raised confidence for key sectors to move to all-out action.
At the same time, we recognise that, given the obstacles at the top, and the still early stage of the rebuilding of the workers’ movement, the outcome of this wave of struggle remains uncertain.
While decisive victories are possible, draws and even defeats can also not be ruled out.
It is possible that the government could end some of the strikes with a combination of a lump sum and improved pay offers for next year, even if they are objectively pay cuts given inflation levels.
This could, in some cases, mean imposing the deals in opposition to the unions, but without effective union action being organised against it.
In others, workers may choose to bank what they’ve won, even if it is inadequate, and prepare for the next round.
Depending how things develop at a certain stage, in some disputes, it could be necessary to retreat in good order and prepare for the next battle, rather than suffer a serious defeat.
Particularly for the workers who are facing fundamental attacks on their terms and conditions, what will be essential is ensuring they come out of this with their unions’ fighting capacity intact.
However, even if the outcomes of some of the strikes are setbacks, broad sections of the working class will draw the same conclusions as Bob Crow, late general secretary of the RMT, that “if you fight you won’t always win, but if you don’t fight you will always lose”.
Already, numerous strikes, particularly some of those in the private sector, have demonstrated that workers can win big victories.
Whatever the outcome of this wave of struggle, there will be no return to complete calm.
Instead it will prepare the ground for future battles.
These will inevitably have a different character than this first phase, both because of the experience that has been gained, but also because of new circumstances.
In a recession with workplaces closing and unemployment rising, mass workplace occupations can be posed for this time in this era.
And, while developments in the workplaces and trade unions are key, we also have to be prepared for all kinds of other eruptions of struggle.
The first glimmerings of student protests against the cost-of-living squeeze are currently developing, but could take place on a much bigger scale, like the movement that developed in Southern Ireland in 2022, in response to the planned 2.
8% rise in student maintenance loans – which is more than a £1,500 real-terms cut.
New Black Lives Matter demonstrations, movements against climate change, mass campaigns in opposition to violence against women, community campaigns against evictions, protests to defend the NHS, and much more are inevitable.
Our role is always to participate in and help build those movements, but above all to put forward a programme to take each movement forward.
The essence of our programme: that we fight for every step forward but that a prerequisite for ending racism, overcoming women’s oppression or halting climate change is the overthrow of capitalism, and that the working class is the key force to achieve that, will be understood by far wider layers today than at any time for many decades as a result of having seen the working class begin to show its potential power in the current trade union struggles.
The trade unions only organise a minority of the working class, but they remain its basic, core organisations because they are the first line of defence for its collective class interests.
Capitalist commentators try and dismiss the trade unions’ strength in the twenty-first century, by comparing it to the much higher level of trade union membership in the 1970s.
In 1979, for example, 53% of workers were union members.
After the defeats of the previous era, while the fundamental strength of the working class remained intact, in 2020 only 23.7% of workers were members of trade unions.
However, in fact the current union membership levels are not atypical historically.
The much higher levels in the 1970s were based on an exceptional situation and class balance of forces.
In 2021 trade union membership was 6.5 million, and was already rising before the current strike wave, increasing year-on-year for the four years up to 2020, and has certainly accelerated since.
This has included the beginnings of union organisation in previously unorganised sectors, like the Amazon warehouses.
While stable levels of trade union membership like those that existed in the 1970s are not on the cards, there is no direct correlation between union density and the scale of struggle.
The number of stewards was also much higher in the 1970s.
In 1980, for example, there were 328,000 workplace representatives, of whom 174,000 were in the private sector.
By 2004 that figure had fallen to 128,000, with only 56,000 in the private sector.
In the eighteen years since there is no doubt the number of workplace representatives fell much further, particularly under the impact of the 2016 anti-union legislation, which cut rights to facility time for trade union duties.
Unison, for example, the biggest public sector union with 1.3 million members, estimated in 2021 there were only 12,000 members active in its structures.
However, the number of shop stewards was also relatively low – despite high union membership – in the 1960s; it was the surge in struggle which forged a new generation of workplace leaders, leading to a doubling of the number of shop stewards in manufacturing between 1966 and 1976.
The same process has begun today.
While union membership may fluctuate along with the rhythm of struggle, the new generation of fighters that are beginning to gain experience now, have the potential to transform the trade union movement.
We have a vital role to play in helping to cohere the new forces currently joining the trade unions into consistent fighters to transform their unions, above all by recruiting as many as possible of them to our party.
The beginning of the development of combines in Unite, under the leadership of Sharon Graham, has the potential to aid this process by bringing together stewards across particular sectors.
Trades councils, often little more than empty shells in recent decades, could now start to take on life and coordinate struggles at a local level.
In addition, the National Shop Stewards Network, with nine unions affiliated to it, has the potential to be filled out and play a critical role in the next phase of struggle.
Also important will be the development of left organisations within specific unions, campaigning for fighting policies under the democratic control of the membership, including calling for trade union officials to be regularly elected, subject to recall by their members and paid a worker’s wage.
