Introducing geographical union identity

This chapter explores unions certified in Great Britain organizing within or beyond the boundaries of either Great Britain or the United Kingdom. While all the geographical unions were observed to draw upon other sources of identity, what distinguishes them from the unions discussed in preceding chapters is a geographical component to their niche identities. However, there appears to be little or no recognition of geographical union identity in existing categorizations or frameworks (see discussion in Chapter One). Recognizing a geographical source of identity is seen as important here in two respects. The first relates to the potentialities for union responses to any reconfiguration of the UK following either the secession of Scotland from the union or the reunification of Ireland. In these cases the experience of established subnational and binational unions might be instructive. The second concerns the formation of multinational unions in order to provide a more effective challenge to multinational capitalism, and in this case the establishment of Nautilus may provide a model for cross-border mergers.

The Scottish and Welsh TUCs were excluded from the analysis because they are federations rather than individual unions, on the same basis that the TUC and GFTU were excluded from the analysis of unions certified in Great Britain. Where unions such as Unite or GMB have members in the Republic of Ireland or, as with BALPA and RMT, have members routinely travelling abroad, this was not considered as contributing sufficiently to recognize them as having a geographical component to their identity. It is also acknowledged that all four unions certified in Northern Ireland project geographical identities. These comprise the Belfast Airport Police Association (BAPA), Lough Neagh Fishermen's Association (LNFA), Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NISPA) and Ulster Teachers Union (UTU) (Certification Officer for Northern Ireland, 2019). The Certification Officer for Northern Ireland (2019) also recognizes three Republic of Ireland unions as having members in Northern Ireland. The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) and Independent Workers Union (IWU) project ‘all Ireland’ geographical identities, while the Financial Services Union (FSU) organizes on both sides of the Irish border as well in Irish banks in Great Britain. In the particular context of Northern Ireland it might be considered that projecting either a ‘Northern Ireland’, or alternatively an ‘all Ireland’, geographical identity might hold political implications.