The following interview explores the perspective of four trade-union militants on the development of the British class struggle in the factory and in society as a whole. In nlr 77 Anthony Barnett surveyed and analysed the upsurge of industrial militancy which culminated in the miners’ strike and the mobilization against the imprisonment of the five dockers. After that time there occurred a relative lull on the industrial front with few big clashes between unions and employers or unions and Government. In a context of economic recovery the Heath Government was able to push through its Phase Two policies for wage control without successful opposition. At the same time a million and a half workers participated in the tuc’s ‘day of action’ on 1 May against the Government’s pay laws and there was no major defeat inflicted on the trade unions. This period, in short, conserved both the gains and the limitations registered by Anthony Barnett’s analysis. In the autumn of this year and the spring of next year there is the prospect of new trials of strength but this time in the context of an over-heated boom and an approaching general election. Already during the upsurge of 1971–2 it was evident the struggle at the point of production was not self-sufficient, but needed to be complemented by a properly political strategy. Rampant inflation and a new fluidity within the arena of bourgeois politics now lend even more substance to this conclusion since they clearly raise problems which cannot be resolved purey through trade union struggle. This interview gives some idea of how these problems affect the trade union struggle itself.