Towards a Politics of the Rainbow

This title was first published in 2002: The trade union movement in twentieth-century Britain has been a cornerstone for society’s marginalized members - women disabled people lesbians and gay men and people from black and ethnic minority communities. As these groups of workers self-organized to reform their unions they built a bridge between the old social movement based around class position and labour identity and the new social movements based around civil rights and status stratifications. This book presents a detailed look at self-organization within public sector unions through the emergence of four self-organized groups within NALGO and later UNISON. Drawing upon unique insider knowledge of the alliances and antipathies between the self-organized groups and the host union the book also provides fascinating revelations of the tensions between self-organized groups themselves. This study will be essential reading for students of political sociology and industrial relations.