ABSTRACT
There have been many discussions in the British trade union movement over the past half century, centred on trade union structure. The Guild Socialists proposed a social structure incorporating the State the trade unions and consumers, as the basis for running industry, the social services and the affairs of the nation generally. The discussion in Britain over the last forty years on the need to restructure the trade unions has not projected industrial unionism as the vehicle for revolutionary change. At the Scarborough Congress in 1924 Miners’ Federation moved a composite resolution which instructed the General Council to prepare a scheme to reduce the number of unions, for organization by industry and for unity of the trade union movement. It was the Post Office workers union who tabled a resolution for the 1962 Congress which again focused discussion on ‘structure’. The resolution called for an examination of the possibility of reorganizing structure of the tuc and the trade union movement.
