ABSTRACT
Tackling race discrimination has not always been on the agenda of the British trade union movement. Whilst by the late 1970s trade unions had moved to a position of being opposed to race discrimination in the workplace, much of the trade union movement still viewed immigrants as competition for domestic workers and there was no indication that trade unions were prepared to take any action to address the specific needs of black workers. A series of industrial disputes in manufacturing, textiles, engineering and transport during the late 1960s and 1970s brought black workers into conflict not only with their employers but also with unions and led to a struggle by black workers for greater recognition by their unions. This struggle led to self-organised groups of black workers organising to get unions to accommodate them within trade union structures, to get trade unions to collectively bargain and to campaign in a more effective way against racism in the workplace. By the mid-1980s the establishment of black self-organised structures in some of the larger trade unions gave anti-racism a much higher profile in the trade union movement.
