SCOTTISH Labour’s Neil Findlay launched a withering attack on the SNP’s caucus of trade unionists today.

In his bi-weekly column for the Morning Star, which from this week will run every other Thursday, the Lothian MSP has accused the SNP trade union group of doing “absolutely nothing” to support workers who lost their jobs as Glasgow’s St Rollox railway works closed last week.

Trade unions had called for the historic works, known as the “Caley,” to be nationalised.

But SNP ministers said EU state-aid rules prevented them from taking it into public ownership.

Mr Findlay argues the union caucus acted as a “cynical flag of convenience to try and win trade unionists to the independence cause,” and had “nothing to do with organising nationalists to support industrial campaigns and struggles.”

He writes: “The SNP trade union group claims 16,000 members — so what has the group been doing to support the Caley workers and their unions? 

“How has the trade union group been using its muscle and influence within the SNP to defend jobs at the Caley, as well as at BiFab in Fife and Michelin in Dundee? 

“What has the SNP trade union group been doing to defend the 40,000 jobs that have been lost at Scotland’s councils, where the SNP government has turned a Tory cut of 2.8 per cent into an SNP cut of 7.5 per cent?”