Mrs Redboots wrote:

I did hear that the militants sometimes - and I'm sure this can't be
true in all cases - cause meetings to spin out for hours and hours
until all the moderates go home in despair and boredom, and the
militants take control.... intimidating any remaining moderates off
the committees....
I don't suppose this is still true today, but it may well have been in
the days when the unions held the nations to ransom!

A little anecdote for you.

In the late seventies/early eighties I was a TU branch officer and used to
take special (i.e. unpaid) leave to attend branch meetings. I wasn't and am
not a "militant", it was recognised by colleagues from both ends of the
spectrum that I usually had a balanced, middle of the road view. But
eventually I got so fed up with the general level of disinterest in their
own conditions and future displayed by my own workmates that I gave up.

On one ocassion a work colleague raised something (it's twenty odd years ago
remember) that caused me to ask why he didn't attend branch meetings. His
response was "I've got a family to support". Not being a family manI asked
him to tell me what that entailed, what it was that he spent his time doing
that stopped him from attending a branch meeting once in a while. He
couldn't tell me.

Yes there were people in the branch who brought up matters that weren't
directly to do with our employment etc and if we had nothing better to talk
about it was allowed, but employment matters took precedence.

Apathy is the biggest problem facing the British workforce because most
people can't see further ahead than the next pay packet and that includes
"management". Far too many people suffer from myopic tunnel vision.