It is sometimes said that trade union conferences are merely the echo of the battle rather than the battle itself. If so then the TUC conference is the echo of the echo of the battle.
The TUC is the most conservative part of the trade union movement with most delegates working full time for the unions and several steps removed from the everyday pressures facing their members.
The outcome of the elections in early May has deepened the fracture lines inside the government Coalition.
The big losers in the elections were the Liberal Democrats. Their base in big city councils built up over the last two decades by posing to the left of Labour, were sharply eroded as Labour revived.
The huge TUC organised demonstration in March has shown that the working class is still a force to be reckoned with. Mark L Thomas looks at the reality of class in Britain today, while Jack Farmer unpicks the debate within the Labour Party over how to relate to the cuts
After the huge TUC-organised anti-cuts demonstration at the end of March, one thing should be clear: the contours of British society remain profoundly shaped by class.
It wasn't just that the 26 March protest was huge, though it was. With at least 500,000 demonstrating - perhaps even as many as 750,000 - it was the second biggest demonstration in British history, after the February 2003 anti-war march.
The TUC march against the cuts can become a springboard for strikes on a scale that can begin to break the government's austerity drive. Martin Smith looks at the debates inside the trade union movement and asks, how can we move from the streets to the picket lines?
Photo: Geoff Dexter
In politics as in comedy, timing is everything. Given the choice, I suspect that David Cameron and George Osborne would not have picked 10 March 2011 as the day for ex-Labour minister Lord Hutton to publish his report on public sector pension reform. Reform is something of a misnomer for what was a full-scale assault on the pensions of
In the wake of the TUC congress, Martin Smith argues that the conditions are ripe for a fightback, while
Mark Campbell reports from the conference floor.
The overwhelming decision of delegates at this year's TUC conference to support coordinated action to fight the austerity measures and to call a national demonstration against the cuts in March 2011 means the battle lines are now drawn.
On one side you have a nasty but clearly nervous Con-Dem government.
On the opening morning of this year‘s TUC conference at Brighton, a small group of demonstrators shouted slogans at delegates as they entered.
These ranged from demands for the TUC to block foundation hospitals to calls for an end to privatisation, racist asylum laws and tuition fees. Scattered among the slogans were, of course, demands for the end of the occupation in Iraq, and Bush and Blair‘s imperial adventures.
