A mass meeting of West Virginia teachers during the recent strike action| Image: AFT – West Virginia

Video: what is rank-and-file trade unionism?

Ian Allinson • March 15, 2018

Trade unions are essential to workers struggling to improve their conditions. But the leaderships of large trade unions don’t have the same interests as their workers. Too often, a reliance on union bosses leads ordinary workers to defeat, as leaders cancel or dial down militant action and preserve a state of peace with management.

In this video, rs21’s Ian Allinson looks at the alternative to the union bureaucracy – a vital, self-reliant politics of the rank-and-file membership.

rank and file strikes trade unions TUC video

Review | Tracey Emin: A Second Life

Sophie Lunts • April 22, 2026

Sophie Lunts reviews Tracey Emin’s retrospective at the Tate Modern, covering the contemporary artist’s trailblazing work and its limits.

The image is taken by an audience member of the Your Party Sctoland founding conference in Dundee. Audience memebrs are sitting on chairs in severeal rows, looking at the panel in front. Your Party merch banners fill the stage.

After the resignations: How Your Party lost Scotland

Sara Bennett • April 17, 2026

Many members have been ejected due to dual membership, and others have left in anger and dismay

A collage in black and white illustrating and symbolsing the war against Iran. Trump is in the front, his gaze to the side, looking on the strait for hormuz, which is filled with war ships and a big iranian flag.

Iran, the ‘ceasefire’, and the crisis of American hegemony

Asmar Rafiq • April 16, 2026

Force alone does not make an empire

The workers have the power

DK Renton • September 12, 2025

Workers have the power to bring the capitalist system down

ASLEF train drivers’ union picket of London Kings Cross station 30th July 2022

Money matters for strikes

Ian Allinson • October 12, 2022

Ian Allinson argues that both strikers and supporters need to get serious about fundraising, and explains how the process can help spread unionisation and resistance to more workers.