An example to others

Parading with our trade union banners at Tolpuddle and enjoying the music, speeches and stalls on offer is fun for all the family. But Tolpuddle is not a monument to an ancient historical period. It is of sharp relevance to the present.

The judge told the six comrades that they were being transported to a New South Wales penal colony "not for anything they had done but as an example to others."

He understood that the law is not neutral in industrial relations and that, as long as capitalism exists, its political representatives will seek to skew the legal balance in favour of those who own the means of production and against those who sell their labour power.

In the early 1970s, conspiracy laws were used, after a successful national pay strike, to fit up building workers at Shrewsbury, with six of them being sent to jail.

The late Des Warren, who served his three-year stretch in full, told the court that the only conspiracy had been between the government and the building employers.

Their victimisation too had been intended as an example to others.

He pointed out that the employers, "by their contempt of the laws governing safety regulations, are guilty of causing the deaths and maiming of workers, yet they are not dealt with by the courts."

That struggle continues with a campaign for a public inquiry into the political conspiracy against the pickets.

Gordon Brown and his new Labour acolytes are fond of reiterating that there can be no return to the 1970s, as though this was some kind of nightmare era.

At that time, trade union membership stood at 13 million and 82 per cent of workers were covered by collective agreements. Today, membership is 6.8 million and collective agreements cover only a third of the workforce.

The Tory governments that held sway from 1979 until 1997 brought in no fewer than nine measures of anti-union legislation, weakening the ability of workers to defend their pay and conditions.

Labour has failed, during the past 11 years, to repeal this body of discriminatory laws. It has championed less regulation for business but not for trade unions.

And the party set up by the trade unions over a century ago continues to take the side of the employers in industrial disputes.

Gate Gourmet workers ought to have been working for British Airways, but privatised BA contracted out cleaning and catering, so that, when other BA workers walked out in solidarity with Gate Gourmet staff, they and their union were threatened with legal action.

Trade unions are due to raise the question of union rights at Labour's forthcoming national policy forum at Warwick. Legalisation of solidarity action should be their core demand.

How can the unions continue to throw money at a party that forces their members to fight with their hands tied against employers for their basic rights?

How many more trade unionists must be victimised as an example to others?