PEOPLE often ask me – especially during a general election campaign – why the Labour Party is so close to the trade union movement. Probably because most school history lessons are long on Kings and Queens of the Middle Ages and short on more recent social and industrial history. Although, when I say recent, I am talking about 120 years ago!

The answer to the question, though, is simple. It’s because the Labour Party was formed by the trade unions. I know my industrial and labour movement history and, even if I didn’t, I would be reminded because I pass a plaque to that fact every day.

Trade unions formed the Labour Representation Committee on February 27 1900 at a meeting in the Congregational Memorial Hall – it is often said that the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than Marxism! – in Farringdon, central London, a few hundred yards from the Aslef head office.
The Conservative Party represented the interests of the landed aristocracy; the Liberal Party the interests of the mill owners and industrialists who had made their money in the Victorian era; and the trade unions – struggling then, as now, for decent wages, terms and conditions for ordinary hard-working men and women – wanted, understandably, a political party to represent them.