Greater attention to history and a more critical stance towards New Labour and workplace partnership would help to recharge New Unionism. Trade union history matters. We need to grasp the past to comprehend the present. We need to encounter the past in order to contemplate potential futures. If we study history seriously we discover that in most of the periods of union resurgence, success did not come through workplace partnership or business unionism. It came sometimes against a background of state support, secured by union power and political influence. But it came always through a series of complex interactions between those in the workplace who began to appreciate the necessity of organisation; and those inside or outside the workplace who stimulated, extended, educated and organised discontent and focused it on its source: the employer.

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