History of trade unions in the United Kingdom TUC General Council. He focused on racial issues. British unions collaborated with the AFL–CIO in the United States on international projects. In the 1980s, worldwide union attention focused on the Solidarity union movement in Poland, which finally succeeded in breaking the communist control of that country. Norman Willis, the general secretary of the TUC, vigorously promoted union support for Solidarity. The nuclear disarmament movement, which played a major role in Labour Party internal politics in the 1980s, was primarily a middle-class movement that had little support in the labour movement. Major strike action by British unions during the 1978–1979 Winter
Temperance movement in the United Kingdom Glasgow and West of Scotland Temperance Society, which was formed in 1829. In 1838, the mass working class movement for universal suffrage, Chartism, included a current called "temperance chartism". Faced with the refusal of the parliament of the time to give the right to vote to working people, the temperance chartists saw the campaign against alcohol as a way of proving to the elites that working-class people were responsible enough to be granted the vote. In 1847, the Band of Hope was founded in Leeds, with the stated aim of saving working class children from the perils of drink. The