Conservative Trade Unionists (CTU) is an organisation within the British Conservative Party made up of Conservative-supporting trade unionists. The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative & Unionist Party) is currently the second largest political party in the United Kingdom in terms of sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), and the largest in terms of public membership. ... A Trade Union (Labour union) ... is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment. ...

Although by 1974 the CTU was over sixty years old, it was practically moribund. However under Margaret Thatcher's leadership there was a drive for recruitment. In 1975 seven new full-time workers were appointed under a new head, John Bowis, and by 1978 there 250 groups (membership of which varied from 20 to 200 members) and the 1977 CTU annual conferences was attended by over 1,200 delegates.^[1] Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October 1925) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. ... John Crocket Bowis (born August 2, 1945 in Brighton, East Sussex) is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament for London. ...

In the mid-1970s its president was Norman Tebbit (a former official of the British Air Line Pilots Association) and he drafted Mrs. Thatcher's speech to the CTU Conference in 1975 shortly after she was elected Conservative leader.[1] Peter Bottomley (a member of the Transport and General Workers Union) was also its president from 1978 to 1980. Sir Brian Mawhinney was its president from 1987 to 1990. Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, CH, PC (born 29 March 1931) is a British Conservative politician and former MP for Chingford, who was born in Southgate in Enfield. ... The British Air Line Pilots Association is the worlds second largest flight crew associations, next to U S Air Line Pilots Association. ... Peter James Bottomley (born July 30, 1944) is a British politician. ... The Transport and General Workers Union, also known as the TGWU and the T&G, is one of the largest general trade unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland - where it is known as the Amalgamated TGWU - with 900,000 members (and was once the largest trade union in the... Brian Stanley Mawhinney, Baron Mawhinney, Kt. ...

Notes

1. ^ Roger King and Neill Nugent (eds.), Respectable Rebels: Middle Class Campaigns in Britain in the 1970s (Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), p. 167.

See also

• List of trade unions