Policing speech or protecting workers?

A new report details how trade unions have encouraged the slide towards authoritarianism and group-think in our workplaces

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

On Monday evening, I was a panellist at the launch of an important new report published by the Free Speech Union (FSU) entitled: ‘Shopped Stewards: Why Today’s Trade Unions Police Speech Instead of Protecting Workers’.

Although I am not a member of the FSU, I think the organisation is doing some extremely valuable work in challenging the slide towards authoritarianism and group-think in our workplaces and wider society. That’s why I was pleased to accept an invitation to write the foreword to the report. I have reproduced that foreword below.

I joined a trade union at 16 when I was stacking shelves in a supermarket. My mum worked for a union, and my dad was a shop steward at his works depot. Trade unionism was in my blood. It still is.

When I became a professional firefighter, I threw myself into activity with the Fire Brigades Union, eventually serving on its national executive. I did the hard yards that come with being a trade union activist and official. I represented members on bread-and-butter workplace issues and in high-level negotiations with bosses. I organised demonstrations and led strikes. I attended the TUC’s annual congress as a delegate and supported countless campaigns and causes throughout the wider labour movement.

I believe passionately that trade unions are a force for good. Most advances secured for ordinary workers over the generations are attributable to the efforts of trade unions. And while the influence of unions in the workplace is not what it once was, the evidence shows that, even today, workers who are in a union are likely to enjoy better pay and conditions than those who aren’t.

Yet I have watched with dismay in recent years as the trade union movement gradually detached itself from its historical moorings. As membership numbers began to fall, unions increasingly retreated to their public sector comfort zone. Today, vast swathes of private industry have no trade union presence, and in many working-class communities unions are seen as a feature of a bygone age.

At the same time, unions started to embrace the ideology of radical progressivism – a dogmatic and uncompromising creed that seeks to upend age-old social and cultural norms and, in the process, stifle all dissent.

As this ideology has seeped deeper and deeper into our public and corporate institutions, so the demand for conformity has intensified. The promotion of identity politics and obsession with ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ have, in many workplaces, bred division and undermined solidarity. Freedom of expression has been eroded while group-think and cancel culture have flourished. The right to be offended has been elevated above the right to voice an opinion. ‘I disagree with you’ has been replaced by ‘You mustn’t say that.’

A trade union movement that once defended with all its might the right to challenge establishment thinking has become an outrider for this new orthodoxy. As workplaces have turned into ideological battlegrounds, many workers have chosen to remain silent, fearful of losing their jobs and livelihoods. Those brave enough to speak up regularly find themselves targeted. All too often, unions pass by on the other side.

Thousands of rank-and-file union representatives continue to strive every day to defend their members’ interests in the workplace. They are a credit to the movement. But for too long those in positions of real influence inside trade unions have got away with imposing their own unrepresentative agenda without regard for the standing of the movement among ordinary workers.

The Free Speech Union is, so far as I can see, the only organisation that has shown itself willing – resolutely and unapologetically – to challenge the slide to political and cultural authoritarianism inside the workplace. It has become the standard bearer in the crusade for freedom of thought, opinion and expression. For that, it deserves the thanks of every worker.

For any proud trade unionist, this report will be a chastening read. It provides numerous examples of workers being mistreated for having dared to exercise their right to voice an opinion. I fear that these examples are merely the tip of iceberg. What of those victims who quietly accept their fate, perhaps on account of the fact that they possess neither the resources nor support to fight back, or simply because they do not desire the publicity?

With the challenges presented by the gig economy, sweatshop warehouses, and the growth in precarious and transient employment, trade unions are needed in our society as much as ever. But for as long as unions continue to position themselves outside of mainstream opinion and line up with bosses and politicians who increasingly seek to police the views of workers, they will limit their appeal to the millions who are in desperate need of workplace representation.

The trade union movement is at a crossroads. If it wishes to stay true to its historical mission to speak for those who too often find themselves without a voice, there needs to be a radical shift in its thinking. And fast.

This report presents a serious challenge to the movement. Trade unionists need not agree with every dot and comma of it: I do not do so myself. But they should be honest enough to recognise that it highlights some crucial concerns and poses serious questions.

For those reasons, the report deserves to be read widely within the trade union movement and beyond.

The full report may be read here.

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