We’ll hit the Olympics in war on cuts, warns union baron

LABOUR’S biggest backer last night threatened a militant campaign of civil disobedience to disrupt the Olympics in protest at cuts to services and public-sector pensions.

Unite union boss ‘ Red Len’ Mccluskey said he would step up the trade union campaign against public cost-cutting.

Mr Mccluskey, whose union has given more than £5million to Labour since the election in 2010, said Unite would stage illegal protests if necessary.

His comments were attacked last night as ‘naked self-interest’ by union ‘dinosaurs’.

Mr Mccluskey said action during the Games would bring his ‘grievances to the attention of as many people as possible’.

Unions are furious that the Government has asked public-sector workers to share the burdens of those in the private sector by paying more into their gold-plated pensions. He said: ‘The attacks being launched on public-sector workers are so deep and ideological that the idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable.

‘The unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting.

‘If the Olympics provide us with an opportunity, then that’s exactly one that we should be looking at. I’m calling upon the general public to engage in civil disobedience.’

Threatening a year of employment strife, Mr Mccluskey said: ‘It won’t be short term. It will drag on and on. There will be an examination of different forms of industrial action. I think it will also involve single- day actions, but it will embrace protests, civil disobedience.’

Asked if Unite would mount illegal strikes to oppose changes in employment conditions, he added: ‘If we need to break the law to defend our basic human rights – right of association – then we will.’

Mr Mccluskey also criticised Labour leader Ed Miliband and shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who have outlined plans to back a pay freeze for public-sector workers and say they wouldn’t be able to reverse all the Coalition’s cuts.

He called the move an ‘extraordinary mistake’ and a ‘stupid own goal’.

Condemning his threat to disrupt the Olympics, Tory chairman Sayeeda Warsi said: ‘This is an appalling display of naked self-interest. It is disgraceful for a union boss to be calling for mass disruption when the eyes of the world will be on Britain.’

Urging Mr Miliband to bring the union leader to heel, she added: ‘Ed Miliband must urgently order his union cronies to rule out disrupting the Olympics.’

Tory MP Matthew Hancock said: ‘The Games will be a chance to showcase our country at her finest. We must not let these union dinosaurs have their way.’

A Labour spokesman said: ‘The Olympics will be time of national celebration. There should be no disruption.’