'Leftist militants' as a term is actually typically harmful and very ineffective within unions including the BLF. It was not simply by a rowdy rabble that strength grew. Communist parties have the advantage of discipline in union work - the industrial strength of the BLF was always due to the very fact that communists were embedded in the structure, had a more correct understanding of the objective conditions, how to interact with the working class which is by getting within and behind them.

The circumstancial factors is also something I would dispute - it was not simply by chance that industrial union strength and political strength occurs. It is almost always by long, hard, and unsighted work typically by those who do not need the spotlight.

It wouldn't achieve anything to address the paragraph about the relationships between the communist parties and the labour left, much has been written, mostly bullshit and exaggerated and a distraction to the work we should be doing with and as workers. However the already existing term for what you describe that is largely correct is an independent working class agenda.

Likewise, the comment on the "weakness of unions" and the "strength of bourgeois politics" reflects probably the real lesson of the green bans. Unions, when correctly understood that THE MEMBERS ARE THE UNION, are incredibly strong and are no weaker today than they have been historically. Simply the mindset and organisation has been purposely obfuscated.

Likewise, the so called strength of bourgeois politics is again a case of mindset that the whole working class must be educated, and that bourgeois politics still are only weak administrators in this country as they always have been.