This Great Movement of Ours: The blog

“Tigmoo” is one of those expressions that newcomers to the British labour movement will be unfamiliar with. It’s an acronym for “this great movement of ours” which was one of the most common cliches used by union orators in the past. The term has been revived in all its glorious irony as the name of a new website which unites British union blogs and bloggers.


The website, located at http://www.tigmoo.co.uk, is constantly updated with material from more than 40 UK union weblogs — among them those of the TUC’s Brendan Barber and the general secretaries of the CWU, UCU and Napo, Billy Hayes, Sally Hunt and Judy McKnight. Other blogs belong to trade union branches (such as Coventry UNISON), or were created to focus attention on a dispute, such as the “Keep Burberry British” blog. Others are simply the blogs of individual members of unions in the U.K. Some of these are updated every day while others seem to have been abandoned — sometimes not long after they were launched. The number of union blogs continues go grow.
The TIGMOO site was the initiate of John Wood, the TUC’s webmaster, though the site is itself unofficial. Because of its unofficial character, and the very nature of blogs, it is far more lively to read than the average trade union website. It’s also updated much more frequently. There were 17 news items in the last two days alone, and that number is sure to rise. No national trade union website in Britain including that of the TUC is producing so much content so quickly.
The site suggests a number of ways for British trade unionists to get more involved. Of course if you, or your union branch, or someone you know in a union has a blog, it should be added to the Tigmoo feed — more details are on the site. (Basically, they’ll scan your blog every hour for new content and add it to Tigmoo.) With only 40 bloggers identified so far, this is surely the tip of the iceberg — there are probably many more.
They also encourage people to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, and if you don’t know what that is, this is a good place to learn about it. People are encouraged to sign up to use the site, to put Tigmoo buttons on their sites, and to spread the word.
It’s a great initiative and should be on the list of favourites (bookmarks) of every trade unionist in the country. Or should I say — every member of this great movement of ours.

2 Comments on "This Great Movement of Ours: The blog"

  1. Arieh Lebowitz | 11/09/2007 at 21:44 |

    Eric: I must admit that seeing the third item on tigmoo put me off a bit; the issue of neo-Nazis amongst Russian immigrants to Israel is in the news, but I can’t see why this item is on tigmoo per se, especially that it’s from a rather nasty and tendentious weblog:
    The scum of the earth flock to Israel
    Red Star Coven – 21 hours 27 min ago
    The shock arrest of a neo-Nazi gang in Israel highlights the absurdity of the Zionist state’s immigration laws. Israel’s immigration laws are absurd and racist. Anyone, from anywhere in the world,…
    Categories: personal, scotland

  2. Arieh – welcome to the Internet, where you’re likely to come across a lot of opinions you disagree with. Tigmoo doesn’t choose it’s content – it simply aggregates what trade unionists are writing about.

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