ABSTRACT

De Turberville encapsulates the flavour of organizing as ‘a proactive bottomup model of collective organization in which members constantly use innovative techniques to empower themselves’ (de Turberville 2004: 777). The TUC’s version, which draws on experience in Australia and the USA, embodies this vision; but overall it is perhaps better captured by the phrase ‘managed activism’ (Heery 2003; Simms 2007). For strategy, stimulation, pressure and coordination come largely from Congress House, the offices of affiliated unions and professional organizers: from above, not from below. There must be some discontent, grievance, desire for change, impetus within workplaces: its transformation into organizing involves a dialectic between workers and external leadership. But organizing campaigns are orchestrated by the union leadership rather than stemming organically from the workforce. ‘Managed activism’ involves the TUC and unions implanting a culture of organizing inside Britain’s workplaces rather than nurturing an already emergent culture. Mobilization has a strong external and sometimes a weak internal dimension. The organizing agenda was driven, at least initially, not by a grassroots shop stewards movement but by a TUC Academy and by paid organizers trained by the TUC. However, it was anticipated that ‘top-down’ action would eventually produce bottom-up organizing (TUC 1997: 43-4).