ABSTRACT
The working class have for centuries struggled to achieve some control over their conditions of life at work. The struggles of workers have taken on various forms dependent upon the development of tools and techniques used by them in their efforts to gain mastery over the rest of nature. One of their forms of struggle has been the organisation of workers into trade unions. In the economic crisis which has been developing in the past few years in Britain, the Wilson Government acted against the trade unions in the same brutal way as the previous and present Tory Governments. The Eighth Workers' Control Conference, held in October 1970 and attended by 1,300 delegates, issued a call supporting the demand that a one-day strike take place on 8 December 1970, and that the National Council of Labour and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) should organise a massive demonstration of trade unionists as a start to the fight against the Industrial Relations Bill.
