Introduction

This book set out to explore ways in which community development workers can enhance their contributions to social justice agendas by developing strategic approaches that take account of the contested concept of social class together with the ways in which class intersects with gender; race; ethnicity, caste and faith, among other forms of social division. Community development itself cannot, of course, resolve the challenges posed by neoliberal globalisation. But as Shaw and Martin have argued (2008, p.305), community workers can make significant contributions, enabling people in communities to pursue their interests democratically as part of wider strategies for social justice.

The aim in this chapter is to reflect upon strategies and experiences of aiming to build bridges between community-based and grassroots organisations on the one hand and workplace-based organisations on the other. While the chapter focuses primarily upon British examples, there seem to be a number of potentially wider implications, too. For example, how might such reflections inform community development more generally, drawing upon critical understandings of social class and inequality to build effective and sustainable alliances with wider movements for progressive social change?

Alliances based on addressing shared community and union concerns constitute a theme that runs through many of the preceding chapters. For example, Gary Craig's chapter (Craig, chapter Three) includes reflections on experiences of strategic alliance building in the past. The more recent experiences of the MST in Brazil illustrate the potential for building alliances between rural workers and urban workers (Martínez-Torres and Firmiano, chapter Ten), while the chapter on environmental struggles in Italy demonstrates the scope for linking workers and their communities in struggles against industrial pollution (Barca and Leonardi, chapter Four). Similarly, other chapters reflect on the opportunities and challenges involved in working alongside formal political structures, including political parties and movements of the Left (Franklin, chapter Five; Geddes, chapter Six; Hicks and Myeni, chapter Seven).

This chapter starts by reflecting upon further examples of community–trade union organising in Britain. This sets the framework for summarising some potential implications for alliance building for the future. Trade unions have a long history of engagement with movements for progressive social change, the significance of which has not been lost on governments with very different political agendas.