MARCH 28 in Britain saw more than one million public sector workers striking to defend their pension rights. In a show of defiance against Blair's latest attack on their conditions, pickets were mounted and rallies were held up and down the country.
This was the biggest day's strike action for many long years.
For all the eleven unions involved in the dispute, but particularly for the biggest -UNISON - this is a crucial nattle.
But while the leadership seem to think that this means they have to keep tight hands on the reins and dictate tactics from the top, there is a real danger that this could lead to a further defeat for the already weakened trade unions.
Despite union leaders' conviction that they will be able to force ministers back from a policy that would single out local government statt for the worst and meanest pensions in the public sector, the New Labour government showed its determination to dig in its heels.
The very next day after the strike they laid the regulations before parliament to change the pension scheme.
The trade union leaders will need to show equal resolve if this fight is to result in a victory for rights at work: so far there is little to show that their heart is really in it.
Although the timing of the dispute has meant that UNISON's Dave Prentis has been obliged to withhold the union's considerable financial support and its usual army of full-time officials who would normally be central to Labour's election effort in the run up to May's council elections, the country's biggest union has played down this significant political rift with New Labour.
And rather than outlining any escalating programme of action, it is clear that union chiefs hope that the threat to disrupt polling stations on May 4 and other guerrillastyle actions will be enough to force Deputy John Prescott back to the negotiating table.
The fact is that the union leaders themselves were taken aback by the scale of the response on March 28, which reached into places where organisation has previously been weak or non-existent.
People signed up to join a union for the first time when lney saw organisallons begınning to gear up to defend their rights at work - rather than concentrate on selling them cheaper car insurance... Thatcher
Thousands of workers who took action on March 28 were not of working age before Margaret Thatcher's imposition of the anti-union laws and the defeat of the Miners' strike. They have no memory ot unions actually winning victories through collective action.
New workplace and branch onbrete organisation desperately needs to be built out of this dispute. But while this has some chance if the government are forced to back down and at least concede what the other public sector unions got in the autumn, if the dispute is defeated then many will have less confidence to fight on other questions.
In a happy coincidence, March 28 also saw three million demonstrating on the streets of France - in the biggest mobilisation in recent French history, bigger even than 1968.
But it is not only in its proportions that
In Britain, the bosses in practice have sweeping rights to dismiss all workers, whatever their age and however long they have been working there. That is the legacy of the continual erosion of trade union strength and organisation since the Thatcher era.
In France, where there has been no Thatcher-style defeats for union action, the ment does not come trom trade union organisation as such. In fact only a very small percentage of workers in
France belong to French
La trade union workers have and many of