Despite the decline in union influence and size, the British trade unions remain true mass organisations with an impressive base. 40% of all British workplaces have at least one union rep or shop steward. The figure has remained the same since 1990. This army of activists will, in the right conditions and with some leadership, be the core of a revival of class struggle. Thatcher did not destroy this core and Blair will not be able to either.

So far, however, a relentless bosses' offensive and feeble union policies have kept the figures going down.

1998 saw the lowest number of hours lost through industrial action ever recorded in Britain. Of workplaces with over 25 employees, 48.9% recognized a union in 1993. By 1998 that had dropped to 43.5%. Union density among employees in production industry has fallen from 45% in 1989 to 31% in 1998, and so is now the same as in service industries. In all manual jobs density has dropped 14% since 1989, to the same level as non-manual jobs.

Union density is much higher in the public sector than in the private sector. Ongoing attacks on unionism in privatised industries may make this weakness even worse, as recently-privatised industries help to hold up the figures for the private sector. Another worrying trend is the very low level of membership among young workers. In 1998 union density for those under 20 was only 4%. Even for 20 to 29 year olds it was only 20%. There is evidence that this is a real generation gap, and will not be resolved automatically by this generation joining unions later on in life.

The decline is not due to a change in the nature of work, still less a disappearance of the working class, but defeats in class struggle.

According to the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, "virtually none of the [fall in the level of union recognition] arose from the fact that the [new workplaces] were more likely to be in the private services sector and employ more part-timers....it was because new workplaces, controlling for sector and workforce composition were less likely to recognise unions than workplaces that had been shut down".

Decline in union membership is a common pattern across the world, driven by common factors of IMF austerity plans, bosses' efforts to gear up to sharpened international competition, and lost political confidence in the ranks of labour. Outside the ex-Stalinist states, where the figures mislead because weak but real unions have replaced large but state-controlled outfits, the UK had one of the biggest falls in union density worldwide in 1985-95 - 27.7%. Instructively, in some advanced countries where the unions collaborated with social-democratic "pink-Thatcherite" governments, the losses were worse than in Britain where the unions faced a head-on attack by "blue Thatcherism". In Australia, union density fell 29.6%, in France 37.2%.

The French example also shows the way to revival. After that devastating fall in union density, the unions launched a mass strike wave in November-December 1995. Some countries, notably South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, have seen sizeable rises in union strength; some North European trade union movements have increased their already-high union densities (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland).

Perhaps most instructively for Britain, in 1999 the US unions recorded their largest increase in membership for 20 years (up 265,000 to 16.5 million - but still only 13.9% of the workforce). That has been done by a real (if limited) shift in orientation, exemplified by the 40,000-strong union turnout to demonstrate in Seattle, and by massive recruitment drives. In the last four years the US unions have doubled the amount they have spent on organising.

In Britain, there are moves at the lower levels of some unions to take up the organising techniques of the better elements of the US and Australian union movements, but only on a small scale. The general response of the union leaders to the most pro-capitalist and anti-working-class Labour government in British history has been a sickening display of occasional blasts of hot air preceded and followed by obsequious forelock-tugging. The pathetic story of the minimum wage has been topped by the farce of the Employment Relations Act. New Labour transformed it from the meagre but potentially useful crust to the unions promised in the manifesto to a minute crumb riddled with dangerous splinters. Still, the union leaders have swallowed it down and kept smiling and saying thank you even as it sticks in their flabby throats. Yet the only time since 1979 when union membership has stopped falling was during the 1984-5 miners' strike. Workers want unions that fight, not blather about partnership with the bosses.

The organised left in the unions is weak. The old CP broad lefts have continued to rot both politically and in strength. They have become props for the leadership, as in the T&GWU, or shown so little fight as to be insignificant, as in the GPMU. Dave Rix's election as ASLEF general secretary has been the only real victory for the left in union elections.

There is a real caution among established left-wing trade-unionists, most of whom would rather follow an upswing in militancy than lead it.

Trotsky's comment at the end of the 1930s is relevant today: "Even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period, as bystanders. When a program or an organisation wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalised by the youth who are free of responsibilities for the past... Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution".

There are still many established union activists open to socialist ideas - and not many socialists striving to bring them those ideas. But socialists cannot afford to spend all our time arguing in small committees with other long-standing left or not-so-left union activists, nor in becoming the loyal dogsbodies carrying the local union structures on our own. Turning the unions out to recruit, and taking political ideas to workmates who may not be activists in the union but are interested in understanding the world, will give us contact with fresh people who do not carry the scars of old battles.

The record of the New Labour Government has sharpened the need to fight for working-class political representation. This question will become more and more central to our union activity in the coming period. It can and should be tied closely to the fight to scrap the anti-union laws and for a Workers' Charter of positive rights for trade unionists.