ABSTRACT
The author talks about the research project which was a sensitive one from the outset, since self-organization has been a source of huge political controversy in the trade union movement. He discusses the structural and cultural divisions between oppressors and oppressed, for which the best antidote would be the anti-oppressive paradigm. There were undoubtedly a few leadership figures who sought to provide a sanitized account of self-organization, insisting either that it was now part of the Establishment so that the union was beyond reproach, or else that only the self-organized groups (SOGs) saved the union from its endemic racism and homophobia so that the SOGs should be immunized from criticism. The ultimate success of self-organization therefore resides in its deconstruction and reconstruction, ideally it would become an organization of self-and-others which deconstructs and reconstructs the world as well as itself.
