Labour Days: A Labour Movement Podcast

Tony Blair once reassured a journalist that, even after New Labour’s moderate reforms to employment law, Britain would still have “the most restrictive union laws in the western world.” What do those laws consist of, where do they come from, and how can we resist them? Prof. Mustill, Ellie, and Daniel rattle through the chronology. Ellie also bigs up the ongoing election campaign of John Moloney, standing to be re-elected as Assistant General Secretary of her union, PCS. We’ve mentioned John on a previous episode (https://soundcloud.com/labour-days/rank-and-filism-101-whats-the-bureaucracy-whats-the-rank-and-file), particularly highlighting his pledge to take the same salary he was paid as a rank-and-file worker and donate the rest of his official’s salary to the PCS strike fund. Voting for PCS members opens on 9 November and closes on 14 December. Check out John’s campaign here: https://john4ags.org/ John is running alongside Marion Lloyd, who is standing for General Secretary: https://twitter.com/Mario

Our own Liam McNulty has written a new political biography of the Irish revolutionary James Connolly, entitled ‘James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist & Internationalist.’ In this episode we discuss Connolly as a workplace organiser and theorist of trade union organisation, looking at his role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and in major disputes such as the 1913 Dublin Lockout. You can buy Liam’s book here: https://www.merlinpress.co.uk/page/backlist/?act=search&find=connolly For further reading, try Liam’s article on ‘Connolly’s Legacy’: https://workersliberty.org/legacy-james-connolly-wl-373 You can also learn more about Connolly’s trade unionism in the Workers’ Liberty pamphlet ‘Effective Trade Unionism’, which brings together several of Connolly’s writing on workplace organisation and features a foreword by Liam: https://www.workersliberty.org/connolly-unions See previous episode descriptions for copyright info on our intro music.