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
History of Solidarity fared extremely well, capturing 160 of 161 contested Sejm seats, and 92 of 100 Senate seats. After the second round, it had won virtually every seat—all 161 in the Sejm, and 99 in the Senate. These elections, in which anti-communist candidates won a striking victory, inaugurated a series of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe that eventually culminated in the fall of communism. The new Contract Sejm, named for the agreement that had been reached by the communist party and the Solidarity movement during the Polish Round Table Talks, would be dominated by Solidarity. As agreed beforehand, Wojciech