Trade unions in the United Kingdom

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The legal status of trade unions in the United Kingdom was established by a Royal Commission in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organisations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Legalised in 1871, the Trade Union Movement sought to reform socio-economic conditions for working men in British industries, and the Unions' search for this led to the creation of a Labour Representation Committee which effectively formed the basis for today's Labour Party, which still has extensive links with the Trade Union Movement in Britain. Margaret Thatcher's governments weakened the powers of the unions in the 1980s, in particular by making it more difficult to strike legally, and some within the British trades union movement criticise Tony Blair's Labour government for not reversing some of Thatcher's changes since taking office in 1997. Most British unions are members of the TUC, the Trades Union Congress (founded in 1867), or where appropriate, the Scottish Trades Union Congress or the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which are the country's principal national trade union centres.

The decline in numbers of members, very steep in the 1980s (from 13million in 1979) seems to have stopped now, and numbers have stayed around 7.3 million since the year 2000. This means that trade unions remain among the biggest organizations in the country.

No doubt the majority of trade unionists now are office workers or shop workers - industrial workers have become a minority. Initially many writers considered that such white collar employees would necessarily be less militant than blue collar workers. The rise in strike action by white collar workers in the 1970s contradicted this thesis.