How the British Labour Party Supporting Trade Unions Lost their Way

UK Trade Union Members: From 13 Million members to One in Five.

Trade unions were built for practical survival and to advocate fair pay, safe workplaces, job security, decent hours, and protection from exploitation. That is what made them powerful, because they were useful to workers and protected them.

They once were powerful. In the 1970s, the British Labour Party funding Trade Union membership sat at historic highs. By 1979, Trade Union membership peaked at 13.2 million. Today, that mass movement has withered into something far smaller and far less relevant to everyday working life. It is sad to say but those once great British Labour funding Trade Union are no longer fit for purpose.

The Numbers of Decline

In 2024, the number of UK employees who were Trade Union members was 6.4 million. Trade Union membership among employees fell to 22.0% to roughly one worker in five. Total employee numbers were around 29.2 million which puts their decline into perspective.

That means roughly 22.8 million employees are not in a Trade Union. So, it is no wonder that workers across England are seeing their work place employment rights being ignored by employers.

Britain, not just England has moved from an era when British Trade Unions could credibly claim to represent working people as a whole, to one where nearly four in five employees are outside that British Labour Party funding Trade Union movement.

A Failure to Represent the Whole Economy

And the collapse is not evenly spread. It tells you exactly where those Trade Unions have failed.

In 2024, British Labour Party funding Trade Union membership density in the public sector was 49.9%, around half. In the private sector, it was 11.7%, barely one in ten. Those figures show the truth of the matter!!

That is the heart of the problem. British Labour Party funding Trade Unions have retreated into the parts of the economy where organising is easiest such as large public institutions, stable workforces, and established monopolised recognition.

This has left millions of workers in private industry, fragmented workplaces, outsourced services, and newer job models left with little or no representation.

These British Labour Party funding Trade Unions have gone for the easy membership route but even then, they are too inefficient and ineffective to make much difference and conditions for workers are declining.

Complacency and the Loss of Workplace Focus

However, they failed to adapt like a serious organising Trade Union movement should have with all worker recruitment, workplace-by-workplace wins, aggressive local presence, modern communications, flexible membership models. Also, they failed to organise door-to-door, site-by-site, industry-by-industry.

Instead, they grew complacent, relying on employer-funded facility time, employer paid reps, and comfortable recognition agreements in shrinking public-sector strongholds.

These British Labour Party supporting Trade Unions have become complacent and arrogant. And when Trade Unions are complacent, they become lazy. They stop selling a clear offer of employment protection to working people. They stop making themselves indispensable. They expect loyalty without earning it.

But workers don’t join Trade Unions out of nostalgia. They join when they believe it will materially improve their lives with improved pay, work life balance rotas, reasonable workloads, improved safety, the stopping of management bullying, and with improved training.

The most important of all is when disciplinary and grievance support is needed and also redundancy protection if the business and employment comes to an end.

The Workers of England Union highlights these points, If your Trade Union looks like a political club, acts like a bureaucracy, and speaks like it is addressing activists rather than workers, then don’t be surprised when workers and colleagues shrug and walk away. This is why you should ask hard questions about the representation you are receiving.

Rebuilding Independent Trade Unionism

This is why the Workers of England was established. It wanted to be an independent Trade Union that wanted to do the best for its members across England.

The collapse to “one in five” Trade Union members isn’t just about hostile governments or changing industries. It is the result of absolute failure of these British Labour Party funding Trade Unions to keep up with the times and failing to stay focused on what working people actually need.

Rather than fighting to organise membership within a new economy, they retreated into bureaucracy. And while millions of workers were left without representation, the British Labour Party funding Trade Union leaderships increasingly shifted their focus to international politics and ideological campaigns, neglecting the core job they existed to do, which was to defend workers at work.

Instead these Trade Unions start behaving like political pressure groups and that political ideology became open to infiltration and manipulation of the far-left and communism.

That is exactly why the Workers of England Union came into existence, it wanted to break through the rot and rebuild Trade Unionism in the traditional independent style of the old Trade Unionist that fought so hard for workers’ rights across England. The WEU wanted Trade Unionism to be the way it was meant to be. For the worker!

The WEU is independent, politically unaffiliated, and unapologetically focused on workplace reality. No party leash. No ideological fashion. No lazy box-ticking. We believe in old-fashioned Trade Unionism: showing up, fighting cases, winning disputes, protecting members face-to-face, and standing shoulder to shoulder with workers when it matters.

While these outdated British Labour Party funding Trade Unions chase headlines on international causes, we stay rooted in England’s workplaces and communities.

Members’ money goes where it should, into professional employment representation, legal protection, and real support, not into radicalised, far-left political campaigns.

Workers deserve a Trade Union that works for them, not one that treats them as a footnote to somebody else’s agenda.

The Workers of England Union is about service to its members, strength in representation, and true Trade Union independence, Putting workers back in charge of their own Trade Union movement is important to us.

In Part 2 we will examine how the far-left and communism started to infiltrate and manipulate the Labour Party funding Trade Unions

Stephen Morris
General Secretary
Workers of England Union