How did Strike Map start, and what were you trying to do?

Strike Map: Our core aim is to document the levels of strike action in the country, enable others to see those levels, pass on messages of solidarity, encourage other workers in their struggles, and bring those leading struggles together through a network.

That is the aim we set out with, but since we started the project has grown. Documenting and presenting the level of strike action is still our first aim. At first, we saw ourselves almost as a bit of an archive of industrial action at the beginning, because we realised that no one was actually recording this data. There was limited data, and we saw the need to map it, as this geographical element had never been done before. You could find the number of days lost to strike action, but nothing to do with who was involved, where, or what the reasons were. There wasn’t any meaningful data about what was going on. So, it naturally progressed from there.

How do you collect the information on the strikes that go up?

In an ideal world, it would be uploaded by reps from unions themselves. In reality, it’s a mix of our volunteers who sort of scrape data from union websites and some unions that send us their data. Some workers do it themselves. What we would want is for every rep to upload the strike before they go on the picket line.

The process is that if you’re going on strike, you go to strikemap.org, submit your strike. As simple as that, it goes up on the map. We’re not, as one general secretary recently said to me, an administrative function. Using Strike Map has an impact on building your struggle, and it is part of an organising toolkit that you can use.

We now have national and local branches affiliated, as well as trades councils, that are starting to get access to the back end of Strike Map to upload and manage their own strikes. This is part of a process of making it easier for everyone to access and use.

How has it worked as the project has grown in scale?

We thought we would have a map, build it up, maybe archive it each year, and start a new one. However, then people started using it for things like seeing where the picket lines were and wanting to get involved. We started adding more functionality, such as getting directions to a picket, sending messages to a picket, and so on. It shifted from being just an archive or almost an academic project to an on-the-ground solidarity tool. We’ve also had over 6,000 picket lines added to the map!

These aims have guided Strike Map, but we’ve also updated them to fit the conditions. Essentially, what Strike Map has become is a place of three interconnected ideas. The first is supporting rank-and-file activity in trade unions, wider campaigns, and political circles, and supporting action that can be organised independently from the official union channels when needed. The second part is promoting the ideas of industrial unionism. This is linked to our industrial unionism pamphlet series that we did a few years ago. We wanted to promote the idea that we can rebuild our power and grow the movement by having clearly defined industry-wide unions, rather than a multi-union environment where we spend most of our time poaching members from each other or fighting each other instead of the boss. The third aim was to build solidarity and coordination. Now, of course, we have to do this with a gentle push-and-pull approach, because we’re not trade union leaders, we’re not elected, and we can’t just tell unions what to do. However, we can try to facilitate the activities and behaviours we think are important for building stronger solidarity among workers involved in different struggles and for coordinating as part of one struggle between capital and labour.

How has building connections with affiliates worked at Strike Map?

NEU has been one of our biggest supporters from the start. They were our first national affiliate. The BFAWU and ASLEF have been supportive from the start, as well as the FBU. It has been harder to get some of the bigger unions on board, like UNISON and UNITE, but at a grassroots level, members from every union have been supportive and played an important role from day one. We have connections at the national level and then workers on the ground.

When we started the project, Henry was working as a staffer at NEU, and Rob was a frustrated activist trying to make a change in the workplace and beyond. We connected through social media, and that was the start of our relationship. Rob started the “Red for Key Workers” initiative, which predated Strike Map but led into it. The NEU, in that sense, played an important role in bringing us together, but it also has the strongest branch affiliations. They have promoted the project across the union and invited us to speak at their events.

We started as a map of action, but have moved into supporting solidarity, delivering activities like the mega pickets. Early on, other unions were a bit sceptical about the ability to deliver on these other activities and whether the project could survive past six months. However, being useful to the union movement but not controlled by it means Strike Map can be a useful ally. Unions have recognised that value, leading to more affiliations, such as PCS, UNITE, and Equity. We didn’t have a strong relationship with these unions previously, but now we do. That is as a result of the activities that Strike Map has been doing.

How have you brought workers together across different unions?

We have developed different ways to involve workers in Strike Map. For example, we introduced “visit the picket line”, where people could pledge that they would visit. We had a loyalty card scheme that, if you visited enough pickets, you would get some merchandise. This made the front page of the Daily Mail and Daily Express - money can’t buy that kind of publicity! It was a bit of a joke, but people got involved and started visiting more picket lines than before. We started a network of “Strike Clubs” early on in the project, which were geographically located groups across different unions. Some of them have thousands of members in different parts of the country. They have varied, of course, but in the Southeast of England they have organised loads of fundraisers and solidarity visits.

These Strike Clubs have been important for organising transportation to picket lines. They are dedicated groups for organising solidarity, which has been really useful. This has provided a way to organise solidarity outside of the existing anti-union law. If there is a limit on the number of workers on a picket line, that does not apply to supporters who protest at the same place. The same is true for flying pickets. If workers are prevented from doing it, then you can have protestors going to other workplaces. This started happening organically, and you can see this with the Mega Pickets, how powerful it has become.

The Mega Pickets are an important part of the Strike Map story. We have built Strike Map as a non-sectarian project that embraces the revolutionary left. Now that might sound contradictory, but if you look at the planning of the Mega Pickets, these were built through contact with different revolutionary left groups, that tier of activists who are going to show up at 4am no matter what, and they might bring ten or fifteen people with them. So, we started with that network, recognising how important that can be. The trade union leadership would reject those people outright. Or, maybe bring them for the numbers and then get rid of them after they have helped build some leverage. We built the Mega Pickets from the starting point of being non-sectarian. That layer of activists provides strong support for a picket, then you can build it out more broadly.

This is also about rebuilding our ability to mobilise. Trades Councils can be extremely mixed at the local level, but there are lots of people involved in them doing excellent work. However, we are quite far away from Councils of Action that are delivering sandwiches to picket lines all over the place, like a hundred years ago at the General Strike. This patchiness of local organising also meets a patchiness of the trade union branch as an organising unit. Instead of these two levels of support reinforcing each other, they have both ended up quite weak. What we have been trying to do is reinforce and grow each of them. If you build a reputation for always showing up, you can become a pillar on which to rebuild and deliver some of that local-level activity. This is a starting point for rejuvenating branches and trades councils where they exist.

This is the important point: through things like the mega pickets, we have not invented something new. We have reminded the trade union movement of the tactics of its history that have been successful, whether it be Saltley Gate or the mass pickets of the general strike in this anniversary year. We are building this through digital technologies, but it is two old tools: leverage campaigns and visiting scab agencies. We are taking everything the bosses are throwing at us, and we have an antidote that enables people, whether they can join a picket or not, to build leverage and powerful campaigns. Many trade unions have either always used these tactics or have started using them more.

The Mega Picket has become a part of escalation strategies. More and more unions are now calling them Mega Pickets because they recognise the brand value of a successful shutdown of production or whatever site. However, fundamentally, it is about building a non-sectarian platform, which is extremely difficult within trade union political spaces. We should acknowledge that it is the power of Strike Map, embracing the revolutionary left, but not trying to substitute for trade unions. We started on the basis that we were sick of press releases about strikes that were PDFs and couldn’t be found on websites. Now, the trade union movement shouts more about strike action. Some unions even do their own Strike Maps. This is a testament to the volunteers and the work that Strike Map has built over the years - and hopefully, long will it continue. But we want those people to do it for themselves, not for Strike Map to do it.

What kinds of challenges have you had along the way?

In the early days of Strike Map, it was the amount of workload. It was just us doing it at the start, trying to fit it around full-time work and family life. As we have developed, it has got easier as we have volunteers who share that work. We now have a steering group that runs the project, who are fantastic. There is a division of labour, and it means we are able to get much more done. Joining GFTU made a lot of this easier and helped with the pressure. The project now has a permanent home, and Henry can spend some of his work time on it, as well as having administrative support. As projects get bigger, the administration and accounts start becoming more important, but we want to get out there and join picket lines. But there are T-shirts to post out and accounts to file.

We have always tried to be self-critical as part of the project; this is really important for building something like Strike Map. We have to understand our limitations. The largest challenge is that we are at a historically low level of class struggle. The problem with low levels of class struggle is that it also means low levels of independent, organised rank-and-file activity. This means that in many areas, it is hard to facilitate or deliver meaningful coordination and solidarity around strikes. We have to take the period we are in seriously. Strike levels are low but are growing, particularly in formal strike action.

We supported the Gloucestershire phlebotomists’ strike from the off. The rep asked to speak with us, and then we spoke with staff members connected to the dispute. We speak to both, but our orientation is to the rep, and that’s who we take our orders from, metaphorically speaking. We had spoken with them about supporting a mass mobilisation for their 365th day of action. Their regional office saw that as a direct threat. They thought we were getting in the way of meaningful negotiation. Actually, what we were trying to do was support the rep and build the biggest leverage campaign to force the employer to negotiate after a year of striking. As a result, the union worked with the employer to shut us out, and also to try to “third-party” us away from the rep.

We acknowledged that we are always a third party, of course. Unions can pick and choose whether to work with us. This is connected to the challenge of funding. We have had some success with grant funding, but we recognise that if Strike Map is funded by charities rather than the working class, the project will feel different. For example, look at unions like the United Farm Workers, which have changed their funding model and what that has meant for their organising as a trade union. When Strike Map started taking national affiliation money from different unions, that could start restricting what you could say. Now, we have been lucky so far that an affiliate has not put us in that position, but it would be naive to think it will not happen. If we called on a strike to continue after the national union tried to stop it, disaffiliation would happen extremely quickly. The leadership would not want money going to support the project.

It is also a challenge to keep a project like this going with the workload. Not only is it always busy, but also how to maintain the project through the natural ebbs and flows. This is the case with many activist projects, but it can be difficult to weather the changes in periods of activity. We have had people come and go sustainably. But the fact that we have lasted six years is an utter miracle. Part of how we have kept things going is through affiliations, support from volunteers, trades councils, and wider links with the movement. The move to GFTU has also enabled us to mitigate some of these challenges. It makes the project feel a bit more permanent now. However, it will always be vulnerable to funding issues. For example, GFTU has 30 affiliates, and not all of them are affiliated to Strike Map. So, even being part of GFTU does not mean that affiliates of one will support the other. Even if they do, it does not necessarily mean they will engage.

We should acknowledge the big elephant in the room, the Trades Union Congress. This is the centre of British trade unionism, yet it has not supported or promoted our work. This has never, ever stopped us from promoting any of the actions they have undertaken or any actions they take to support workers on strike. We will always support any trade union regardless of affiliation.

What do you have planned for the project going forward?

We are developing logins for affiliated organisations to use, manage, and integrate into their internal workflows. The only beauty of the most restrictive trade union laws in Western Europe is that there is a clear process for taking strike action, and uploading to Strike Map can be integrated into the union’s internal processes. When the details are sent to the employer, they can also be added to the map. Whether that is done at a local or a national level depends on the trade union and culture. The next step is to work with other unions with whom we do not yet have a strong base. Our hope is to get more affiliations and their support, having them use the map to share their actions. This also means promoting it as part of the wider working class movement.

We launched the solidarity fund on the 1st of May as a clear, deliberate, and permanent attempt to make it easier for people to connect with crowdfunding around strikes. We want workers, regardless of their union, whether they are a branch officer or just a rank-and-file member. It will be an easy way to give money to strikers. We hope that this level of solidarity infrastructure provides us with a place within the trade union movement and also enables other unions that receive that solidarity funding. We want this to mean they can see the value of what we are doing and, of course, support us, so it becomes a reinforcing circle. This is a solidarity service, and we have already had a fantastic response, raising money from individuals and unions. This kind of infrastructure is really important.

We are also building relationships with the Blacklist Support Group and Real News, deepening our connections with organisations like Notes from Below, and building a wider network of organisations that can work in concert on different projects. One of these is the “Builders Crack” construction rank-and-file bulletin 30th-year anniversary project, other publications, and the General Strike national partnership. This is about whether we will be a permanent part of the trade union movement.

We also think the cost of living will increase, and there is a possibility of another strike wave. If there is, we will need a quick response to support this. We have been trying to bring unions together to take solidarity actions, including open letters and other softer activities, as well as larger picket lines and days of solidarity. We need to start taking immediate next steps between now and the end of the year that can build solidarity. We are also going to publish more reports on strike action, similar to those by Stephen Muschin and Andy Hodder. Let us also not forget that the Birmingham deal is not done yet. There is also a changing electoral landscape. Supporting unions to navigate that and face what comes is even more important.

We also have a Strike Club in Ireland, and we are supporting them to replicate what we have done in a way that suits the context on the island of Ireland. There are now versions of Strike Map in Belgium, the Netherlands, the USA, and so on. We have had lots of interest from trade union members, but you need activists on the ground to make something like this work.

If you had the resources to do whatever you want with Strike Map, what would you do?

This may happen organically - and we are lobbying some unions for it - but we would want to see Strike Map become a supportive, campaigning rank-and-file organisation that can work with trade union leaderships to provide activity. We would want to be at the centre of developing rallies, events, and conferences, as well as political and trade union education events, in concert with the union, maybe as part of, for instance, an upcoming big industrial action ballot campaign. For example, a rally of striking workers who have won across different sectors within that union, with the General Secretary at the front, linking all the reps and branch officers from that union who are leading struggles together. We could be a support base to deliver that kind of thing.

We have started this to an extent, but it is embryonic, both at the NEU and at the FBU, with different conferences of either branch officers or at a national level, bringing together a platform of striking workers from different disputes into a conference discussing the need for strike action in that union. This is both to show what is possible, but also the challenges involved in this kind of activity. The aim is to have a strategic conversation with workers who have been in year-long disputes, for example.

What we would want is one of our affiliates to say, “Can we sit down with you and plan a series of actions, events, and other things for the next six months to do with the strike campaign?” For us, this would be a natural development of what we are doing, not to be owned or co-opted by that trade union, but for us to use the thing we have built to good use.

Trade union laws still have not been revoked. So we do not want to forget that there is still a need to mobilise and try to encourage other forms of action.

If neither the money nor the buy-in were a problem, Strike Map would have a small, permanent core team able to work on the project full-time. We could do more educational events through our relationship with GFTU. For example, we want to do “Organising Dayschools” to bring together different parts of our movement to develop skills, theory, political economy, both learning to do new things and raising class consciousness. This is what we have been trying to do in the project, but more explicitly. For example, how can we understand class struggle in Britain beyond ONS statistics? How can workers strengthen the data element of it and also strengthen our organising, political education, and class consciousness?

If we had more resources, we would develop our Strike Clubs working in concert with trades councils. The aim would be to develop regional centres with a structure around them, rather than relying on exceptional volunteers like the South East does. Finding a way to coordinate in this way would be fundamental. It would also provide a close link to class struggle in every part of Britain.

This is the kind of strike platform we would like to build. Moving from WhatsApp groups into functioning, active bodies that support strikes and work inside trades councils, rather than as a parallel structure to them. Expanding this to support the trades council in a more structured way would also be important, particularly in the face of a reform government. We will need networks of solidarity that can fight against the far right and organise in communities, rather than just mobilisations on the streets of London.

None of what we’ve achieved so far would be possible without the support of trade unions and individuals who have supported the project, both through donations and their time. Sharing the project has been really important, as have the people who have given a couple of pounds a month for many years. That has been critical for us. We almost had to shut down Strike Map at one point because we became a victim of our own success. When we started off in the first year, we had a hundred pickets in the whole year on the map. We thought it was amazing. The next year, we had the Hot Summer Strike and the Winter of Discontent. Suddenly, we were getting thousands, tens of thousands of hits on the website. We started getting bills from Google for loads of money. We had to send out a “Save Strike Map” call. We were able to get enough to upgrade the map and keep it going. The large majority of that was donations from individuals, small donations here and there. We would not exist without all that support. We want to maintain a connection to that. We do not want to become some faceless bureaucracy, but have workers at the heart of everything we do, as they should always be.