I started my working life as a low-paid children’s residential care worker supporting vulnerable children, and I am still a registered social worker today. I discovered the labour movement through the powerful women who mentored me and showed me that working-class people will only win the dignity we deserve if we join together in our workplaces.

On Wednesday, I was elected general secretary of Britain’s biggest union, Unison. Trade unions are meant to be vehicles for workers to collectively organise, represent and lead ourselves, so my election should be an unremarkable event.

Yet I will be the first ordinary member to lead my union in its history. This represents a huge opening for the democratic renewal of the labour movement. The fact that my election is so unprecedented tells its own tale.

It is the blows inflicted upon us by Thatcherite politicians and employers over the decades that explain the enduring weakness of trade unions – clear to see in our industrial impotence and stubbornly low member engagement.

But some at the top of our movement have contributed to its decline, too, by creating cultures where workers, ordinary members, are consistently disregarded by their own organisations. Defending our class interests, the core work of unions, has been an afterthought, at best. Careers and cosy Westminster clubs have come........

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