In the early months of 1979, militant trade unions dragged Britain to the brink of the dark days of the 1970s. As industrial action escalated across the country, public services were paralysed, uncollected rubbish piled high in the streets and bodies went unburied at cemeteries. ‘There is madness in the air,’ the senior Downing Street aide Bernard Donoughue wrote in his diary at the peak of the turmoil.
It took the fierce resolution of Margaret Thatcher to tame the trade unions and bring an end to the chaos. Yet more than 40 years after she embarked on her brave crusade against the red barons, the days of organised bullying and blackmail could be on the way back – with a vengeance.
As the prospect of a Labour Government under Sir Keir Starmer moves closer, there is now a real threat that the Iron Lady’s heroic achievement in curtailing the destructive, self-serving power of the unions could be undone.
That grim danger was highlighted this week by the settlement of the latest pay dispute on the London Underground, where the RMT – notorious for their addiction to strikes under the intransigent leadership of Mick Lynch – were threatening a week-long stoppage in support of their demand for an improved offer. Prolonged misery for commuters and businesses looked inevitable. But then at the eleventh hour, there was a dramatic breakthrough. In a feat of remarkable alchemy, the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan suddenly found that he could conjure up some extra funds to satisfy the ravenous appetite of the RMT. A significantly improved offer was made and the walkout was abandoned.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union halted its walkout on the Underground after Mr Khan made more funds available
If Starmer reaches No 10, a culture of appeasement towards the trade unions will become embedded within the government
Presenting himself as the wise architect of industrial peace, the Mayor declared that ‘this shows what can be achieved by engaging and working with transport staff and trade unions’. But his spin could not be more deceitful. Sadiq Khan has no cause for boasting or celebration. His ‘engagement’ is really abject surrender. All he has done is to use public money to buy off Labour’s allies in the trade union movement.
Mr Khan habitually wails that he never has enough cash to run effective services because of ‘Tory cuts’. So where has this pot of gold appeared from? Although he has not spelt out the source, the suspicion is that the money comes from the highly controversial charge he has imposed on older cars travelling through London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone, which amounts to £12.50 a day for each vehicle and is estimated to bring in around £24million a month.
The idea that this deal will bring about any sort of lasting harmony in industrial relations is absurd. On the contrary, having seen the craven weakness of the Mayor, the RMT will now be emboldened to demand more. In effect, Khan has robbed the management of any leverage in future talks, while the RMT, which cares nothing for financial restraint or public service, will be keen to exploit its dominance.
This week’s pay agreement on the underground could be a worrying portent of things to come under Labour. If Starmer reaches No 10, a culture of appeasement towards the trade unions will become embedded within the government, though it will be dressed up as a new form of ‘partnership’ or ‘co-operation’. Labour’s reluctance to stand up to the unions has already been on full display in the rash of irresponsible strikes in the public sector. Teachers, train drivers, nurses, lecturers, ambulance crews have all walked out, resulting in 3.9million working days lost to strikes in the year to October 2023, easily the highest total for more than a decade. But Labour politicians have not uttered so much as a batsqueak of criticism against the unions, not even the grossly irresponsible British Medical Association, with their outrageous demand for a 35 per cent increase in junior doctors’ pay.
Instead, Labour greets every dispute with a parrot cry for the ‘government to get round the table’, no matter how unjustfied the claim.
This month, it is exactly a century since the establishment of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. Since then, the party’s close bonds with the unions has always been a major problem, undermining objectivity, restricting Labour Ministers’ scope for action and promoting narrow vested interests above the nation’s real needs. After all, Labour was created in 1900 as the political wing of the trade union movement, and a proprietorial spirit still remains strong. As Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite has spelt out: ‘The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions and we expect Labour MPs to defend workers by word and action.’
A key element of this connection is trade union funding, which remains vital for Labour’s capacity to campaign. In the first half of 2022, no less than 58 per cent of Labour’s donations came from the unions. The cash kept flowing the following year. In the middle of 2023, for instance, the party received £290,000 from the mighty GMB, £215,000 from the shopworkers’ union Usdaw and £176,000 from the Unison, which represents public employees.
The relationship is tight among the party’s top brass. During his leadership campaign in early 2020, Sir Keir Starmer boasted that he is ‘a proud trade unionist’ who had ‘worked with the trade unions all his life’, including a stint ‘as a legal observer’ at the Wapping newspaper plant, scene of the bitter clash between Rupert Murdoch and the print unions.
Rubbish piled up on streets of London due to industrial action by refuse collectors in 1979
His Deputy Angela Rayner has even deeper ties. Before she entered Parliament, she was employed for several years as a care worker at Stockport Council. In that post, she was elected a Unison representative, eventually becoming the union’s most senior official in the whole North-West region. Her devotion even extended, at one stage, into her personal life. Rayner’s ex-partner is the Corbynite MP Sam Tarry, who had previously worked for the TSSA transport union.
‘If I get to be Deputy Prime Minister of this country, I will not let you down,’ she told the annual gathering of the TUC last autumn.
She went on: ‘I make no apologies that we will work hand-in-hand with the trade unions’ to deliver ‘a real partnership based on mutual respect, co-operation and negotiation’. In her self-appointed role as the guardian of the union movement, she has promised that in the first 100 days of a Labour government, she will introduce an employment rights bill. Among its provisions will be new rules to make it easier for unions to organize in the workplace, a simplified process for union recognition, and the introduction of electronic balloting and more collective bargaining. Even more importantly, she has also pledge to repeal the Conservatives’ anti-strike legislation, including the recent requirement that public sector employees still provide a minimum level of service even when they are in dispute. In the warped mindset of Labour, this layer of protection is an affront to democratic rights and therefore has to go.
The entire agenda is a recipe for more grievance and more industrial action. Once more, the militants will be able to hold the country to ransom. Badly needed public-sector reforms, including the removal of outdated working practices and bureaucratic structures, will be blocked as the unions defend a failing status quo that suits their members. Pay demands and days lost to walkouts will soar. Productivity will plummet.
Unions fancy themselves as progressive, but in truth they are deeply reactionary, hostile to change and innovation. The lesson of the 1970s is that greater engagement – then dubbed ‘beer and sandwiches in Number 10’ – ends up handing them far too much control. The country will pay a heavy price if they are once again able to exercise power without responsibility.