Question: What year were trade unions legalized in Tony Blair's country?

The Union Modernisation Fund (UMF) was a fund established in 2005 by the Government of the United Kingdom (at this time under the leadership of Tony Blair, who was part of the Labour government) with the aim of providing financial support to British trade unions by supporting "innovative modernisation projects which contribute to a transformational change in the organisational effectiveness of a trade union".  The fund was overseen by the independent quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation (quango) the Union Modernisation Fund Supervisory Board (officially termed a non-departmental public body), which was part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.  Three rounds of the UMF were held, with a large amount of money disseminated to trade unions.  The Conservatives criticised the fund, calling it a way to keep the unions "sweet", and the then shadow business secretary Alan Duncan called on Gordon Brown to scrap the fund.  Only three rounds of funding were ever held, and the board was abolished in 2010 as part of the UK government's quango reforms (as the board's function had been completed).  In total the fund gave £7 million to trade unions throughout its existence. <SEP>  Legalised in 1871, the trade union movement sought to reform socio-economic conditions for working men in British industries, and the trade unions' search for this led to the creation of a Labour Representation Committee which effectively formed the basis for today's Labour Party, which still has extensive links with the Trade Union Movement in Britain. Trade unions in the United Kingdom were first decriminalised under the recommendation of a Royal Commission in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organisations was to the advantage of both employers and employees.  Margaret Thatcher's governments weakened the powers of the unions in the 1980s, in particular by making it more difficult to strike legally, and some within the British trades union movement criticised Tony Blair's Labour government for not reversing some of Thatcher's changes.  Most British unions are members of the TUC, the Trades Union Congress (founded in 1867), or where appropriate, the Scottish Trades Union Congress or the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which are the country's principal national trade union centres. <SEP> The Free Trade Unions (German: "Freie Gewerkschaften"; sometimes also translated as Free Labor Unions or Free Labour Unions) comprised the socialist trade union movement in Germany from 1890 to 1933.  The term distinguished them from the liberal ("yellow") and Christian labor unions in Germany.  Coordinated by the General Commission of German Trade Unions until 1919 and later by the Federal Executive of the German Trade Union Federation, the Free Trade Unions consisted of forty-six individual labor organizations with a total of 2.5 million members as of 1914.  The term "free" was to note that these unions were independent worker organizations.  The liberal ("yellow") unions were considered to be controlled by management and the "Christian" trade unions by the Catholic Church. <SEP>  He previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 21 July 1994 to 2 May 1997.  He is the most recent British Labour Party leader to have won a general election. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 21 July 1994 to 24 June 2007.