ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism, No.22, Autumn 1965, p.30.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
NATSOPA: seventy-fire years
James Moran
Heinemann, 30s
The Printers’ Labourers Union was founded in 1889, the era of the new unions and the year of the great dock strike. But it was not a union of general labourers and after several changes took its present name. George Isaacs, the general secretary from 1909 to 1948, after some early opposition (what sort of opposition Moran does not tell us), ‘wielded power and influence far in excess of that conferred by the society’s rules’. Under Isaacs NATSOPA adhered to official Labour policy; under its present general secretary it has taken a more ‘left’ line on such issues as nuclear disarmament and clause four.
Much, though not all, of the story is one of craft exclusiveness and inter-union disputes. Like many other official union histories the book is uninspired and uninspiring.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 12.5.2008