30 years since Grunwicks

Socialist Resistance no38 | page 9

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

11am-5pm Tricycle Theatre, 269 High Rd Kilburn Kilburn tube (Jubilee Line) Scargill, • John McDonnell MP. BOOKINGS 07903 162175 Tickets £7 (includes food, film and speakers) SPEAKERS include • Jayaben Desai, • Arthur self organise within the unions - something many activists today might take for granted? TvG: While the right to organise within unions may now be more wide-spread, it cannot take the place of selforganisation. So such struc. tures cannot work when they are a way of the trade union bureaucracy "fobbing off" black workers into their caucuses etc. l

There are still many issues confronting black workers in Britain both in the workplace and in the unions that the unions themselves need to confront. But without selforganisation, trade unions will continue to be part of the problem, not the solution.

That said, it is vital for black workers to see the trade unions as their natural home, even if they aren't always welcomed when it comes to achieving positions etc. Not being in a union is not the answer.