5 October 2015
The Trade Union Bill seeks to make many strikes illegal – and eliminate civil liberties fought for over many years.
The announcement that the Conservative trade unionists organisation, disbanded over 25 years ago, is to be reconstituted should show everyone in the trade union movement just how weak and desperate government really is. Opposition to the Trade Union Bill is growing, and the growing “Kill the Bill” campaign organised by the TUC is rapidly gaining ground, with many unions reporting increased recruitment.
Opposition to the Trade Union Bill is not only over the attempts to make strike action illegal but every measure the government is proposing to eliminate workers’ civil liberties fought for over many years, including the right to free speech, the right to assembly and the right to association.
“Franco’s Spain”
Proposals that every use of social media during a dispute must be notified to the police and employers two weeks in advance of being circulated or that every picket has to register their name and address with the police have been viewed with horror across the political spectrum. Even the Conservative MP David Davies, speaking to Sky News on 13 September, said, “What is this? This isn’t Franco’s Britain, this is Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain.”
The attempts to destroy workers’ political funds, to destroy our right to dissent and campaign are creating ever wider alliances of opposition to the government, from civil liberties organisations to numerous peers in the House of Lords.
If the Conservative Party wants to organise its supporters inside the trade unions, let them do so. After all, millions of workers voted for them. We have had such organisations before – remember “Trade Union friends of NATO”. At least it will put names to the fifth column we’ve always had in our ranks.