‘Dismay as headquarters of TUC up on the market as commerce union memberships plunge’

It isn’t just a building. For generations, it has been the beating heart of trade unionism in Britain. Historic events, such as the emotional end of the miners Strike For Jobs in 1985, took place within its walls.

Outside, a giant bronze Bernard Meadows statue of a worker representing the strong helping the weak, inspired all who passed beneath into hallowed ground.

Congress House, headquarters of the TUC in Central London, was a familiar landmark, on our TVs night after night with news about strikes.

And now it’s up for sale, put on the market by cash-strapped union bosses who cannot afford the £20million desperately needed for a revamp of the block that officially opened in 1958.

The TUC general council, its ruling body, voted last weekend to sell the headquarters where their forebears took decisions that sometimes shook the nation.

The steel, glass and Cornish granite-faced edifice on Great Russell Street sits on one of the most desirable real estate plots in the capital.

But it is a Grade II* listed building and potential developers might be put off by the need to conserve in situ the front statue, and a Jacob Epstein figure of a woman holding her dead son, a tribute to the trade union dead of two world wars, in the courtyard.

The projected sale comes as membership of trade unions, and hence affiliation fees to the TUC, continue to fall to a post-war nadir. From a high of more than 12 million in the 1970s, numbers have dropped to little more than half that. Staff at the TUC now fear an uncertain future.

There is unhappiness that unions giving money to Labour cannot find the cash to save this historic HQ. “The Epstein statue alone must be worth more than £20m,” says one source.

Congress House, run by a succession of general secretaries – George Woodcock, Vic Feather and Len Murray – who became household names, was the scene of many peace deals.

It was where union leaders went to get themselves off the hook of action they had started but could not stop. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak called the decision to move “an incredibly difficult one” but added it was in the movement’s best interests.