TRADE union action, driven by resistance to real pay cuts and intensified exploitation, is now at the highest levels so far this century.

How can this be built on?  Where might such action lead, beyond immediate and partial victories?

This timely pamphlet from the Communist Party endeavours to answer these questions.  It builds on a long tradition of Communists seeking to give shape and direction to the basic struggles of trade unions.

The party’s key orientation has always been towards building broad unity behind a militant strategy of advance, and in seeking to generalise for the class as a whole the experiences of the particular sections.

The pamphlet correctly locates the present upsurge within a broader crisis of the capitalist system, presently expressed in rampant inflation, a synonym for wage-cutting. It emphasises the central importance of building and rebuilding trade unions after decades of decline in numbers and confidence.

The reasons for that decline are briefly sketched, followed by an analysis of the part the Communist Party continues to play in generating action and renewal.

Importantly, in view of current controversies, it states that “politics cannot be ignored”, both in the narrow and immediate sense of dealing with legislation like anti-union measures, but also in the broader sense of “breaking the grip of big business” on industry and society.

The history of Communist work in unions is reviewed, and the key part played, from the 1960s onwards, by the creation of broad lefts seeking to bring together activists in each union on a unified campaigning basis.

A clear programme for advance is outlined, pivoting on securing trade union freedom from the shackles of Tory laws, winning the wages struggles, securing sectoral collective bargaining, fighting for race and sex equality, and championing the rebuilding of public services.

This leads on of course to the Communist Party’s broader Alternative Economic and Political Strategy which aims to open up the road to socialism by securing the election of a left-wing government “supported by mass organisations of the working class in struggle.”

The pamphlet concludes by outlining what renewed Broad Lefts in unions should look like, focusing on building unity, organising, taking effective collective action and enhancing union democracy.

The many proposals in this pamphlet should be at the centre of trade union debate in this turbulent period, and will doubtless be enriched by such discussion.

It would perhaps have been advantageous had the proposals rested on a more concrete analysis of what has actually been going on in British trade unions – the successes and failures of different organising strategies, the tendency to take one-day rather than indefinite strike action, the problems which have often disrupted Broad Lefts, and the rise of a new semi-syndicalism which downplays the importance of political action.

As it is, no union is mentioned by name other than a solitary reference to the CWU, nor is there any analysis of the Corbyn period, which gives the pamphlet an unnecessarily abstract flavour.

That reservation aside, the Communist Party has done a further service to the movement with the production of this pamphlet and by raising the key questions which must be addressed for further advance. In the furnace of struggle, its propositions will be tested.