Last but not least, trade unions need to ramp up the production of videos for social media. This is a cost-effective way of mobilising workers to vote in strike ballots, share grievances and participate in pickets, while simultaneously damaging the reputations of managers. A brilliant example is the University and College Union’s superb spoof video of two vice-chancellors – enriched by fat-cat pay packets – sneering at their workers while drinking martinis in a limo.
However, social media is not without risks. Companies hit by strike action, as well as the Conservative Party embroiled in public-sector disputes with rail workers, waste collectors, NHS staff and postal workers are likely to be using social media just as intensely to try to discredit trade unions. This can happen either overtly through counter-communication or covertly through trolling, ‘dark post’ ads and surveillance that could result in blacklisting and worker activists being fired.
This type of activity is in the shadows for now, due to the echo-chamber effect on social media, but its impact on public opinion could be substantial and must not be underestimated.
A new version of the Daily Herald
In the medium to long term, the British labour movement could spearhead a resurgence of industrial correspondents by funding journalism degrees at the country’s most prestigious universities.
As ex-BBC correspondent Nicholas Jones argues, “we are lacking the in-depth reporting of old, the background coverage and analysis in press, television and radio, that used to put industrial strife into context and give workers a voice.”
Creating a cohort of sympathetic journalists is a fairly easy way to begin rectifying this state of affairs. A crowdfunding campaign targeting the UK’s more than six million union members is a possible source of financing.
But by itself, such an initiative doesn’t go far enough. To end on an even more idealistic note, the labour movement should seriously consider launching a 21st-century version of the UK’s Daily Herald, which was owned by the TUC from 1922-29, when the union sold a 51% stake to Oldhams Press. (The TUC sold its remaining shares in the paper in 1964.)
At the height of its powers in the early 1930s, the Daily Herald was the world’s best-selling newspaper, reaching millions of almost exclusively working-class readers.
The history of this storied institution, which helped to sustain the powerful labour movement in the early postwar period, has been all but forgotten. I’m aware of it only because my great-grandfather once worked there as a journalist.
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