THE Campaign For Trade Union Freedom is to be congratulated for its role in defending our trade unions promoting trade union freedom and showing just how anti-union Britain has become through a combination of continuing Tory attacks since Thatcher allied with Labour’s virtual abandonment of the unions as vehicles for mass worker engagement and political campaigning.

This includes supporting the ending of trade union legal protection in the fight to defend the interests of workers.

Unions of course were protected throughout much of the 20th century as long as any dispute was held to be “in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute.”

Thatcher changed all that, but the real horror story is that the Labour Party were in government for 13 years from 1997 to 2010, and yet the anti-union laws remained firmly entrenched in the statute book.

Indeed, the only real protections for working people during that period came from the EU, including protection on working time and paid holidays (Working Time Directive), the Acquired Rights Directive, protection when workers face redundancies and protection for agency, temporary and other atypical workers, rights to information and consultation, maternity and parental leave  — and not the Labour government of Blair and Brown.

So when Cameron took office for the Tories he and his successors could build new anti-union laws from a whole new platform of established anti-union law. “We have the weakest trade union rights in Europe,” boasted Tony Blair, even before being elected.

And today we have Sir Keir Starmer, another Labour Party leader who has no idea of true leadership other than to win government at any cost.

“We are not the Tories” seems to be the battle cry and yes, Labour will probably win the coming general election despite their humiliation by George Galloway in Rochdale.

So about the Labour Party? What were the roots that gave it so much support and influence in the post-war period? Take a long hard look at the 1945 Labour Party manifesto.

Wow! This was socialism in action where leaders at every level of the party campaigned and fought for an NHS and public ownership after the horrors of the second world war. It was called Let Us Face the Future.

See just two key extracts as follows: “The freedom of the trade unions, denied by the Trades Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1927, must also be restored. The Labour Party is a socialist party, and proud of it.”

“Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain — free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.”

As the assault on British workers gets worse, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has launched a new international campaign to defend democracy itself, as the position of unions worldwide is being targeted by a combination of employers and states.

Even the ILO has referred the employer’s challenge to the “right to strike” to the ICJ for an advisory opinion! The stakes are very high. Take a look at the ITUC website. We have to get organised politically as well as industrially, this is the big message today.

Is the Labour Party still a viable option for a workers’ party? If it is to be saved as such, I believe the Labour Party has to be re-won from the ground up by the active involvement of tens of thousands of union members across Britain.

We have the power to change it, but if we do nothing, nothing will happen. We have a world to win!

Barry Camfield is a vice president of the Campaign For Trade Union Freedom and lives in Australia. He was previously assistant general secretary of Unite.