Dominic Sandbrook

Thirty years have passed since the defining political struggle of modern times, when Margaret thatcher’s government defeated Arthur Scargill’s miners and broke the power of the unions.

Back in 1985, the miners’ defeat seemed like a watershed in Britain’s political history. For two decades, successive governments had struggled to control the tide of strikes, with foreign observers nicknaming Britain ‘the sick man of Europe’.

But Mrs thatcher’s victory after a gruelling 12- month strike not only defined her premiership, it hammered the last nail into the unions’ coffin. Never again would an overmighty union leader, burning with socialist fervour, defy the law and take on the government — or so it seemed.

yet if one of Britain’s most powerful political figures has his way, we could well be plunged back to the worst days of savage industrial confrontation and open class conflict.

Dinosaurs

Speaking at the Durham Miners’ Gala at the weekend, Len McCluskey, the unashamedly hard-Left leader of the huge Unite union, made no secret of his determination to take on the Government, promising that Britain’s biggest union was ‘not going to see itself rendered toothless by passively submitting to unjust laws’.

the laws he has in mind are no secret. this week, the Government is expected to unveil legislation that would require a 50 per cent turnout in trades union ballots, as well as a threshold of 40 per cent of the eligible vote for strikes in key public services such as health, transport and education to be valid.

you may well think that such legislation seems fair enough. turnout in British union ballots, after all, is a national scandal. Mr McCluskey himself, who claims to represent the will of Britain’s working people, was reelected on a frankly pitiful turnout of just 15 per cent in 2013.

But to Britain’s Left- wing union leaders, who jealously guard their power to order strikes with minimal voter turnout, the Government’s plans are an intolerable affront.

One union boss, the train drivers’ leader Mick Whelan, even claimed yesterday that the proposed legislation ‘smacks of Germany in the thirties when trade union leaders and activists were rounded up and imprisoned, and, in some cases, executed’.

if you think this shows an utter lack of proportion and perspective, you’d be right. Are trade union leaders in Britain in 2015 routinely imprisoned and executed? Or are they rewarded with whacking great salaries and 24-carat pensions?

But for Left-wing dinosaurs such as Mr Whelan, there is no difference between the Nazis and the Conservatives.

‘the Nazis banned unions, and strikes, in 1933,’ he insisted, sounding like an over- earnest but dim-witted student union leader, ‘ and that is what the tories are trying to do now.’

What all this makes very clear is that the union bosses are spoiling for a fight. indeed, only last week Unite, which commands the loyalty of almost 1.5 million members, changed its rulebook to delete the words ‘so far as may be lawful’ from a list of its goals, raising further suspicions that the union might be preparing to defy the law on industrial action.

it beggars belief that more than a decade into the 21st century, our biggest trade union should be preparing the ground for an all- out confrontation with the laws of the land.

As the Eurozone totters on the brink of implosion and British productivity still lags painfully behind many of our competitors, a return to the industrial conflict of the past would be nothing short of a disaster.

Our recent history offers a chilling reminder of the chaos that inevitably follows when overweening union leaders think themselves above the laws that govern the rest of us.

the Sixties and Seventies, for example, were famously dominated by running battles between successive governments and the trades unions.

For years, both major parties had quietly appeased the unions, even though backward working practices and chronic over-hiring were eating away at Britain’s economic competitiveness. At last, in 1969, Labour’s harold Wilson tried to reform the unions’ antiquated procedures with a White Paper entitled in Place Of Strife. But as strikes and protests mounted, Wilson lost his stomach for the fight.

After meekly giving way, Wilson was kicked out by the electorate a year later.

that opened the way for the Conservative leader Edward heath, who had an elaborate union reform plan of his own — but the union leaders were having none of it.

the result saw Britain descend into industrial chaos, with heath forced to call five states of emergency in just three-anda-half years. With the power workers, railwaymen and miners walking out, respect for the British state itself had never been at a lower ebb.

Some Labour politicians revelled in the atmosphere of anarchy. in 1973, one Left-wing MP, Liverpool’s Eric heffer, wrote a book advising the working class there was a difference between ‘ordinary laws’, which they ought to obey, and ‘class laws’, which they should not.

how, some critics wondered, were people to tell the difference? the answer was that they should listen to Mr heffer, who would guide them towards a socialist Utopia.

the result of such Left-wing dogma is well known: a decade of plunging productivity and appalling export sales, in which managers were famously frightened to manage lest they offend their shop stewards, while the Government wrung its hands in impotent misery.

Bullied

the losers, ironically, were precisely the ordinary working people the unions claimed to represent. it was their jobs and livelihoods that were destroyed by the industrial unrest of the Seventies, as overseas investors and consumers turned their backs on Britain.

Even when the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill launched his reckless and self- destructive attempt to unseat the elected government in 1984, the losers were his members themselves — the ordinary miners of yorkshire, South Wales and Scotland who blindly followed him towards their own destruction.

it should barely need pointing out that Britain can ill-afford a return to the conflict of the past. indeed, for David Cameron this may prove a challenge that could define his premiership.

Like Mrs thatcher, he has comfortably seen off a hapless Left-wing opponent at the ballot box. But as in the Eighties, it appears that the union leaders simply cannot accept the verdict of the British people.

it is telling that Mr McCluskey has already thrown his support, in the Labour leadership election, behind the most radical candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, a man so wildly Left-wing he makes Ed Miliband look like Nigel Farage.

Gumption

But if Labour is fast fading into irrelevance, the prospect of Unite leading an open rebellion is a very different story.

Last week’s London Underground walk-out, which brought the capital to a halt, may well be a depressing forecast of what lies ahead: strikes, misery and mounting public fury.

it is worth emphasising that if Boris Johnson had stood up to the rMt union earlier, the strike might never have happened. As so often, however, the Mayor of London preferred bluff and bluster to guts and gumption.

But guts and gumption are precisely the qualities that Mr Cameron needs in the months ahead. history has shown the consequences of appeasement. Like many so many bullies, Len McCluskey clearly respects only one thing: strength.

Mr Cameron should remind Mr McCluskey that almost 12 million people voted Conservative in 2015 — 78 times as many as voted for Mr McCluskey to lead Unite.

And the Prime Minister must make it clear that if Unite defies the will of the people and the law of the land, then he will use all possible means to win the ensuing battle, including, if necessary, using the courts to sequester the union’s assets.

to shrink from the battle would be unthinkable.

Britain learned a painful lesson in the Seventies and Eighties, and it would be madness to turn back the clock now.

Given Unite’s vast resources and Mr McCluskey’s unquenchable self-belief, it may prove a titanic struggle. But it is one Mr Cameron must fight and win.