Unions (part 2)

Throughout the next few weeks GCHQ was headline news on front pages and in Parliament, while many of the staff were faced with an agonising decision.

Events after January 1984

Most of those who objected to the ban considered that membership of an independent trade union was a fundamental right in a modern democracy and its removal constituted an attack on civil liberties, while any problems resulting from individual disputes had to be accepted if the alternative was the destruction of such a basic tenet of freedom.

Even among those who were unsympathetic to union militancy, many felt that a more reasoned approach by management could have secured staff cooperation without the need to resort to such extreme measures. Although eventually over 98% of GCHQ staff accepted the new conditions (about 40% were not trade unions members anyway), many did so only after much anxious debate and inner turmoil.

There was, ultimately, no perfect right or wrong. Several legal cases were fought through the full process in the UK and Europe, the last concluding in April 1987. Eventually the last fourteen employees who would not give up their union membership were dismissed.

For those who remained in GCHQ an internal Staff Federation was formed, and the events of 1984 gradually receded into history. But the plight of those who held out and accordingly suffered through early retirement, transfer or dismissal, was not forgotten in the wider world, and the announcement of the Union Ban was marked in late January every year from 1985 to 1997 by a rally in Cheltenham.

Trade Union recognition restored

The Labour Party was committed to reversing the ban. Following the 1997 elections the new Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, announced to Parliament on 15 May that it would be removed, and that compensation arrangements would be made. The first of those who had been dismissed returned to GCHQ on 9 September, and others, who had been transferred to other departments, returned over the following months.

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