Conservative Trade Unionists
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Conservative Trade Unionists (CTU) is an organisation within the British Conservative Party made up of Conservative-supporting trade unionists.
Although by 1974 the CTU was over sixty years old, it was practically moribund. However under Margaret Thatcher's leadership there was a drive for recruitment. In 1975 seven new full-time workers were appointed under a new head, John Bowis, and by 1978 there 250 groups (membership of which varied from 20 to 200 members) and the 1977 CTU annual conferences was attended by over 1,200 delegates.[1]
In the mid-1970s its president was Norman Tebbit (a former official of the British Air Line Pilots Association) and he drafted Mrs. Thatcher's speech to the CTU Conference in 1975 shortly after she was elected Conservative leader.[1] Peter Bottomley (a member of the Transport and General Workers Union) was also its president from 1978 to 1980. Sir Brian Mawhinney was its president from 1987 to 1990.
[edit] References
- ^ Roger King and Neill Nugent (eds.), Respectable Rebels: Middle Class Campaigns in Britain in the 1970s (Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), p. 167.
