Britain’s Unions Are Back, Just Not the Way You Expected

Photo by Avery Evans

The scale of industrial disputes currently taking place across the UK suggests a trade-union landscape in motion. Unions are depicted as more confident and legally protected than at any point since the 1970s—yet their actions remain fragmented by sector, geography, and timing.

To critics, Antonio Gramsci’s observation feels apt: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

But theory will get us only so far.