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members which is not the same thing. The case studies of uSDAW (retail) and the rMT (rail) is salutary. Both achieved significant membership growth on the back of recruitment campaigns with their own distinct features. uSDAW operated a form of social partnership with the big four retailers. While their activists have been permitted to recruit thousands of their colleagues every year, the increased density has not been translated into a struggle to improve pay levels, which are not markedly better than for uSDAW members in other firms where there is no recognition. rMT by contrast did not buy into the model of having separate and distinct organising units, but rather grew its membership on the back of a succession of successful militantly fought pay campaigns under the Bob Crow leadership. The success of the rMT on recruitment and improved pay and conditions and saving jobs stands out from all the other examples in the book, including ostensibly left-led unions like PCS.
Holgate concludes with appeals to the trade union leaders to adopt a better approach with correct calls for political education of the membership and an embracing of the campaigning spirit of the school student climate movement, BLM and #metoo, so that the union movement speaks to the next generation and harnesses their evident fighting potential. While making this appeal she does not fully face up the struggle that has to be waged by rank and file activists to set them on a different course. The reality is that the sorry state the movement got into in large measure arose when trade union officialdom engaged in a power grab from the shop steward layer that populated the workplaces in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival of the trade union movement in the 21st century will not happen on the basis of the controlled top down recruitment campaigns that do not build the power that enables workers to fight for real improvements in pay and working conditions.n
Betraying Big Brother By Leta Hong Fincher Verso Books, 2018 reviewed by róise McCann
On the eve of International Women’s Day 2015, Chinese Communist Party-controlled state forces arrested Li Maizi, Wu rongrong, Zheng Churan, Wei Tingting and Wang Man; the “Feminist Five”. The five women were organising a protest against rampant sexual harassment in China and planned to hand out stickers on public transport. Leta Hong Fincher’s Betraying Big Brother details the experiences of the Feminist Five, each of whom were subjected to intense interrogations and psychological torture during their detention. Charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, the women potentially faced sentences of five years in prison. CCP attempts to crush a burgeoning feminist movement with the arrests backfired, igniting protests around the world. The following #FreeTheFive campaign exposed the hypocrisy of Xi Jinping, who was gearing up to co-host a united Nations’ event on women’s rights in New York. Facing pressure, the Feminist Five were released after 37 days. As Hong Fincher puts it, patriarchal authoritarianism is critical for the political dominance of the Communist Party in China. State propaganda highlights that the word “family,” jia, is also part of the compound word for “nation,” guojia:”. As such, Xi Jinping paints a picture of the “little families” of China which make up the “big family”, the nation. Along with this propaganda comes a raft of eugenicist and sexist policies and initiatives 34 l SocialiSt alterNative l AuTuMN / WINTEr 2021
which seek to encourage “high-quality women”; middle-class university graduates, to marry and reproduce children for the contribution to a “harmonious society”. Simultaneously, financial barriers and government-pushed overpopulation myths in effect discourage working-class, single and uygur women from deciding to have children. Combined with policies which further exclude women from certain industries and occupations, Hong Fincher shines light on the growing generation of young women who are vehemently rejecting these gender roles and protesting
