Image: RMT picket line – Carlisle station – March 2018. The Carlisle Kid CC BY-SA 2.0

Ian Allinson’s How to Win a Strike is a practical guide for trade unionists and rank-and-file workplace activists. It provides a useful overview of industrial action and a practical guide to building and running a dispute. It covers the key stages of a dispute, from building organisation among members and developing a strategy, to planning and carrying out strike action from a rank-and-file perspective.

The pamphlet is particularly accessible to new activists. Allinson avoids unnecessary jargon and presents complex ideas in a straightforward way. He emphasises the importance of planning, democratic participation and understanding where power lies within a dispute. The book encourages readers to think strategically about targets, escalation, solidarity and the practical realities of taking industrial action.

The pamphlet discusses how strikes can build confidence, strengthen workplace organisation and leave workers better prepared for future campaigns, rather than seeing industrial action simply as an end in itself.

A central theme of the pamphlet is the collective power of workers. Allinson argues that workers can influence, and ultimately force, employers to respond to their demands through collective action, particularly by disrupting production, services and profits.

My experience during the recent eight-month dispute at the National Coal Mining Museum for England (which we won) demonstrated some of the limitations of this approach. Despite continuous industrial action, it was extremely challenging to translate disruption into sufficient pressure to force the employer to seek a settlement.

This is particularly relevant in public-service or NGO workplaces and organisations that are not primarily profit-driven. Where an employer is not directly dependent on profit, the ability of workers to exert pressure through disruption can be significantly weaker. In these circumstances, relying primarily on disruption to services or organisational activity may not be enough to force an employer to concede.

This raises an important question which the pamphlet could explore further: what forms of leverage are available to workers when the economic cost of strike action to the employer is relatively limited?

The pamphlet rejects the idea that winning a strike is simply about taking the most aggressive industrial action possible. Instead, Allinson emphasises the importance of planning, identifying where power lies, understanding who has the authority to settle the dispute and choosing tactics that put pressure on the most critical points.

I think this is one of the pamphlet’s most useful contributions. However, it could engage more critically with recent disputes where industrial action has been prolonged but insufficiently coordinated or escalated.

For example, disputes such as those involving postal workers and NHS workers demonstrated the difficulties that can arise when industrial action becomes infrequent, fragmented or overly reliant on isolated one-day strikes. Where action is not sufficiently coordinated or does not progressively increase pressure on the employer, there is a danger that industrial action becomes a series of individual strike days, announced to workers from above, rather than a coherent collectively-decided campaign designed to win.

The pamphlet is therefore strongest when explaining why strategy is important, but less developed in examining why disputes sometimes fail to develop or implement an effective strategy in practice.

Allinson places considerable emphasis on identifying decision-makers before industrial action begins. Workers need to understand how an organisation makes decisions and identify those who have the authority to concede to their demands. Strikes should then be part of a coherent strategy of escalation, rather than action being called in the repeated vague hope that after the next round "something will turn up".

I believe Allinson is correct on this point. However, the pamphlet is less convincing when considering what happens when escalation does not work.

During the National Coal Mining Museum dispute, industrial action was escalated to indefinite action, but this still had a limited impact on forcing the board to concede to the workers’ demands. This raises a difficult strategic question: what should workers do when they have identified the decision-makers, applied increasing pressure and escalated their action, but the employer still refuses to settle?

The pamphlet is particularly strong on the importance of member involvement and democratic control through bodies such as rank-and-file strike committees. Allinson argues that workers themselves need to have ownership of their dispute rather than leaving decisions solely to union officials.

This is an important principle. There can be a significant gap between the interests of a union bureaucracy and those of workers directly involved in industrial action. Officials may have institutional, political or organisational considerations that do not always correspond with what workers believe is necessary to win their dispute.

Rank-and-file involvement is therefore not simply an issue of internal union democracy. It is also a question of effectiveness. Workers who understand the strategy, participate in decision-making and feel ownership over the dispute are more likely to remain active and committed during difficult periods.

Solidarity is another important theme throughout the pamphlet. Allinson explains how support from colleagues, other trade unions and community organisations can help sustain workers and strengthen a dispute.

This is particularly important during long and continuous strikes. Industrial action can become a difficult and grinding process, and workers can become demoralised when there appears to be little progress. During the National Coal Mining Museum dispute, there were periods when there were no negotiations or movement from the employer, and it sometimes felt as though the dispute was unwinnable.

During these periods, solidarity from other unions was critical for the dispute and its final victory. Visits to the picket line, fundraising and even simple messages of solidarity helped maintain morale and gave striking workers the confidence to continue.

I think the pamphlet could go further in exploring solidarity as more than simply a mechanism for supporting an individual dispute.

During the coal mining museum strike, we developed links with the striking Birmingham bin workers. We visited each other’s picket lines and attempted to connect our campaigns. This had a very positive impact. It helped demonstrate to striking workers that they were part of something bigger than their own workplace dispute and connected them to a wider struggle within the labour movement.

Solidarity can potentially become a source of power in its own right. Sometimes it can be a way of moving from a losing small-section dispute to a more extended and generalised winning dispute. Linking disputes together can help build confidence, create wider political pressure and develop relationships between workers that can be used in future campaigns. The pamphlet touches on this but could explore the strategic potential of coordinated solidarity much further.

The core argument of How to Win a Strike is that successful strikes are not won through spontaneity or determination alone. They require organisation, democratic participation, strategic thinking, effective escalation and strong solidarity.

The pamphlet succeeds as an accessible introduction to the practical organisation of industrial disputes. For new activists, it provides a useful framework for thinking about how to build workplace organisation, identify sources of power and develop a strategy for action. Its emphasis on rank-and-file involvement and democratic control is particularly valuable.

However, the limitations of the pamphlet become more apparent when considering difficult, prolonged disputes where the conventional sources of leverage do not work. The experience of the National Coal Mining Museum dispute demonstrates that disruption does not always translate into employer pressure, that escalation does not always produce concessions, and that identifying the decision-maker does not guarantee that employers can be forced to change their position.

Overall, How to Win a Strike is a very good introduction to industrial action and an excellent resource especially for new workplace activists. Its greatest strength is its practical, rank-and-file approach. Its main weakness is that it is less developed on the problems that arise when a well-organised and escalating dispute still fails to force an employer to settle. Those limitations do not undermine the value of the pamphlet, but they provide an important basis for further discussion about how trade unions can develop strategies for winning difficult and prolonged disputes.

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