Don’t lead us back to the dark age of strife

HERE we go again. Adopting the ugly language of class warfare, Labour’s union paymasters seek to drag Britain back into the dark ages of industrial strife, proving they’ve learned nothing since they brought the country to its knees more than 30 years ago.

Unveiling their boneheaded masterplan to get the economy moving, they propose... wait for it… another Winter of Discontent, with a campaign of co- ordinated stoppages and civil disobedience over the coming months.

‘If you spit on your own, you can’t do anything,’ declares militant RMT leader Bob Crow. ‘But if you all spit together, you can drown the b*****ds.’ Could there be any more disturbing insight into the unions’ bullying mentality and the standard of debate at the TUC?

Leave aside that nothing could be better guaranteed to destroy Britain’s hopes of recovery than a winter of strikes, which would cause incalculable damage to ordinary union members’ interests. What is so contemptible is that the threat comes at a time when employees of private firms have made huge sacrifices to keep the economy turning over. Indeed, it is thanks to them that unemployment remains well below the European average, and hasn’t risen for months.

Yet now the state sector unions – whose members already enjoy superior pay, pensions and working conditions – are prepared to sabotage other people’s jobs (and, indeed, our children’s schooling) in pursuit of selfish demands that no reasonable government could accede to.

This is a fight by the haves against the have-nots. And it’s a battle they know they cannot win – although they can do a great deal of harm in trying.

In his final speech to the Congress, outgoing General Secretary Brendan Barber said the unions’ aim was to force the Coalition to abandon austerity and learn from the triumph of public spending on the Olympics (which, incidentally, Mr Crow’s RMT threatened to disrupt). In other words, the TUC’s leaders’ economic policy is to carry on spending as if the deficit doesn’t exist. How many of their members are really blinkered and irresponsible enough to follow them?