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Reading the article, I was most saddened to hear of the winding-up of the SWSWU. Although the union was insignificant in purely numerical terms (but certainly not to its members), the end of the SWSWU represents the breaking of another link to the early days of the trade union movement. Some may say that there are enough "general unions" such as Unite, that could represent makers of sheep-shearing tools, but the SWSWU, one of the last geographically and trade-specific unions, stuck it out until the decline of their trade resulted in their own demise. Would they have been better-off as some obscure reference in the rule book of a major union? Perhaps not. That they did not endure a name change and a dilution of their democratic structures every three or four years, will have been a blessing.
One thing that puts the major unions to shame is the gender balance in the SWSWU, which was much better than most of the major unions.
