ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the problematic relationship between trade unions and unemployed workers. While the interwar period witnessed the emergence of a powerful organized movement of the unemployed, the 1980s were notable for the absence of such a movement. Yet in both periods, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was wary of any kind of independent organization of the unemployed threatening its leadership of the labour movement. The chapter analyses the emergence of the unemployed movement in the interwar period. It examines the TUCs response to the renewed threat of high unemployment in the 1980s. The chapter examines how the resources of the unemployed in the interwar period were sufficiently powerful to underpin the emergence of a powerful movement which helped to shape subsequent economic and social policy including the commitment of successive postwar governments to full employment. It describes by reflecting on the unions priorities with respect to the unemployed in the 1990s, a period marked by much lower unemployment.
