ABSTRACT
The new SOGAT remained a firm believer in the rationalisation of the print trade union structure. As Division A of the former SOGAT its 1970 Biennial Delegate Council Meeting approved a Basingstoke branch motion ‘that every endeavour be made by this society to accelerate the achievement of a single industrial union’.1 In a short debate in which only the proposer spoke, the main arguments were that the print unions could not afford the luxury of internecine warfare and that to engage in such luxury would be suicidal. The 1972 Biennial Delegate Council approved a London Central Branch motion instructing the National Executive Council to work for unity with all print unions.2 The real intention of the motion was to announce that the past was dead and SOGAT must look to the future firm in the belief that if print workers were to play their part in the advancement of the working class then further amalgamations were necessary.
