And they have hardly begun to think about the implications of the shift to self-employment.But the need for people in the same sort of occupation to act collectively rather than individually remains. To take a seemingly trivial example, why are there leaving parties? People move jobs all the time, yet we all feel the need for an element of ritual when someone moves: a few drinks and a leaving gift. I suggest the reason is that we want to underline the unspoken sense of association co-workers feel. They are saying their loyalty is as much to the people they work with as to the employer.There is a practical point: if one person leaves he or she often brings co-workers too So you want to keep on decent terms with everyone.

We also like to feel we and our fellow workers are members of a club. The more the trade union movement can build on this real need for association, the more successful and secure its future It is a long way from the May Day of 1889.. Rathbone Special Situations is one of the longest-established unit trusts in its sector, and it is run by one of the most experienced fund managers. For the past 10 years, its portfolio has been the responsibility of Patrick Evershed, who started his City career in the Sixties Rathbone Special Situations is one of the longest-established unit trusts in its sector, and it is run by one of the most experienced fund managers. For the past 10 years, its portfolio has been the responsibility of Patrick Evershed, who started his City career in the Sixties. "I have been running this fund since January 1991, when it was still the Brown Shipley Recovery Fund," he says. "When I moved from Brown Shipley to Rathbone, I brought the fund with me." Mr Evershed had a traditional background. "I had always been interested in economics since I was at school and I read economics at Trinity College, Dublin.

Then I went to a firm of stockbrokers as an analyst, where I spent 10 years researching undervalued situations, eventually becoming a partner."I was writing notes on undervalued companies and passing them on to the institutions until I realised that institutions don't really like unrecognised value. I felt I could make more use of this sort of information myself, so I joined Laurence Prust, which, at that time, owned the fund management group Framlington." Mr Evershed spent 10 years at Framlington, managing the Framlington Capital with the group's investment chief, Bill Stuttaford. "It was one of the best-performing unit trusts in the UK during that period in the Eighties, but I left Framlington when it was taken over by Throgmorton and went to Brown Shipley." Here Mr Evershed ran what is now the Rathbone Special Situations Fund, moving to Rathbone in 1993 after Brown Shipley was taken over. "A lot of my former Framlington colleagues had already gone to Rathbone, and it subsequently acquired Laurence Keen, which was also formerly part of Laurence Prust, so a large part of the old Framlington team was back together again," he says."When I took over the fund, there was a lot of dead wood in the portfolio. For example, there was one large Canadian mining company that I could only sell for a nominal sum and that alone knocked 10 per cent off the value of the portfolio. In fact, the first 18 months or so were pretty unpleasant because the fund went down by 20 per cent. I had to face up to the reality that a lot of the stocks in the portfolio I had 'inherited' were heavily overvalued and I just had to take the pain and reconstruct the portfolio."The central element of the fund's investment strategy revolves around its definition of a "special situation".