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Democracy needs unions

Trade unions have been the only player in civil society that have consistently stood up for ordinary people against abuses of the rich and powerful

Trade unionists are right to wash their hands of the latest Tory attempts to politically embarrass the opposition on its links to organised labour.

Given that trade unions have been the only player in civil society that has consisently stood up for ordinary people against the abuses of the rich and powerful Labour should be proud, not shamed, by this historic association.

In any case the "terrifying" peaceful protests by Unite members outside Ineos bosses' homes appear to have been just that - peaceful gatherings.

Images published by the right-wing press of these "intimidatory" actions confirm small demonstrations featuring a dozen or so people with smiling faces and an inflatable rat. Hardly the stuff of nightmares.

Given that Ineos at the time was holding its workforce and the entire country to ransom by threatening to close the Grangemouth petrochemicals plant if it didn't get its way - a threat that would put hundreds out of work and threaten the nation's fuel supplies - the union response on the streets was if anything restrained.

The real rogues in this piece were spineless market-obssessed politicians, who failed to act against this corporate blackmail by calling its bluff with proposals to nationalise, and the bosses at Ineos who were carrying out billionaire bully-boy chairman Jim Ratcliffe's bidding.

Certainly not the workers whose jobs were threatened and who deployed their hard-fought right to demonstrate against bad decisions that affect them.

David Cameron is no doubt being led in his anti-union "crusade" by dubious lobbyist adviser Lynton Crosby, a man renowned for his "wedge tactic" of seeking a point of perceived weakness in the opposition and sticking in the knife.

In Australia Crosby helped the viciously right-wing government of John Howard to victory by focusing on immigration, fuelling a rise in xenophobic hysteria.

In Britain, it seems, he has identified democratically structured trade unions - portrayed inaccurately by Establishment allies in the media as being led by "barons" or "bosses" - as the weak point that can pit the withered rump of money-worshipping Blairites against those deemed to be "soft" on organised labour.

Away from party politics the spin doctor has, among other international lobbying contracts, widely publicised links to big tobacco firms.

So in a nutshell the man advising the Tories to bash the unions is an advocate for big business whose clients - political and corporate - have a complete interest in crushing organised labour.

It is in trade unionism that Britain has its best hope of driving a new and alternative alliance of ideas that puts people, rather than the Con-Dem's powerful class allies at home and abroad, at its centre.

The Unite union alone has set aside a £25 million fund to pursue workplace and social justice for its members.

And one need only look to the raft of socialist-leaning motions debated at this year's Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth to see why the right fears this challenge.

So rightwingers are seeking in one fell swoop to apply even greater shackles to the movement as well as encourage Labour to sever its links with organised workers.

But where would this leave Britain?

The electorate would be completely beholden to the ideological whims of a career political class representing parties whose policies are no longer decided by members.

The complete detachment of politics from any form of democracy, save a rubber-stamp vote every five years, is what awaits if this Tory war on the unions succeeds.

Any trade unionist that collaborates with this process is helping to seal their movement's death warrant.

And Labour, rather than run scared, would do well to keep remembering that the big issues facing people are not a result of the overwhelming power of trade unionism, but the overwhelming power of capital.

Real-life issues are what people want tackled, not manufactured anti-union paranoia driven by a dodgy lobbyist.

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