Last month, the hideous tragedy at London’s Grenfell Tower, in which 80 people burned to death because of substandard building materials, drew attention to the erosion of regulations governing property development, after years of both New Labour and the Conservatives crusading against so-called red tape.

“Crucial public protections have,” George Monbiot explains, “long been derided in the billionaire press as ‘elf ’n’ safety gone mad’. It’s not hard to see how ruthless businesses can cut costs by cutting corners, and how this gives them an advantage over their more scrupulous competitors.”

You might think, then, that revelations about the use of the same inflammable cladding in Australia might have brought some public validation for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), which has been warning for years about the need for greater safety regulation in the local industry.

Instead, we saw an intensification of abuse.

“If the CFMEU were a dog,” the Australian columnist Nick Cater informed his readers a few weeks back, “it would be an irascible, snarling breed, the kind only a tattooed misfit with a pierced nose and ­absurdly large biceps would dream of keeping as a pet.”

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Back in March, the new ACTU leader Sally McManus caused a minor scandal when she defended the right of the CFMEU to take illegal industrial action. “I believe in the rule of law when the law is fair and the law is right,” she said on the ABC’s 7.30. “But when it’s unjust, I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it.”

Cue the yaps of outrage.

Michaelia Cash described the remarks as “outrageous”, while Josh Frydenberg explained that he had no “sympathy with the idea that you should break the law of the land in order to pursue your political objectives”.

In the Australian, Troy Bramston delivered a history lesson.

“The union movement, and subsequently the Labor Party, was formed in the 19th century to legislate for better pay and conditions for working people,” he scolded. “These men and women turned away from rebellion in favour of democracy. They respected the rule of law.”

That’s straight-out nonsense.

The union movement was founded, almost by definition, by people with no respect for the law – given that the Combination Act of 1799 imposed draconian punishments on anyone who organised against their employer.

In 1834, magistrates sentenced six agricultural labourers from Dorset to transportation to Australia after finding them guilty of “unlawfully administering oaths”. The so-called Tolpuddle Martyrs – lawbreakers all – are acknowledged as union pioneers in both nations.

As for the Labor party, it emerged from the so-called great strikes of the 1890s. The maritime dispute of 1890 brought a hundred thousand workers and their supporters onto the Yarra Bank where Colonel Tom Price, the commander of the Mounted Rifles, prepared his troops to shoot to kill. During the shearers strike a year later, the unionists established armed camps in the outback – and thirteen leaders were imprisoned for conspiracy.

There are similar examples all through the twentieth century: the men charged with sedition during the great strike of 1917; the unionists beaten unconscious by police during the unemployed marches of the Depression; tramways leader Clarrie O’Shea jailed by John Kerr for contempt of court in 1969.

If you look at the ASIO files available in the National Archives of Australia, almost every militant union leader of the twentieth century was under some of security surveillance.

Depressingly (though not surprisingly), Bill Shorten joined in the conservative attack on McManus. “If you don’t like a law,” he said, “if you think a law is unjust, use the democratic process to get it changed.”

But here’s the thing: striking is the democratic process.

It’s a fundamental right of working people – and recognised as such by the United Nations.

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As Stephen Long notes, the International Labour Organisation has insisted for decades that the restrictions placed on industrial action by both Labor and Liberal governments contravene Australia’s international obligations.

Prof Andrew Steward of Adelaide University, an expert on labour law, is very clear. “It’s absolutely straightforward … Not only are we flagrantly in breach,” he says, “but our laws are also so restrictive on the right to strike that they are way out of step with the laws of just about every other developed country.”

The recent strike by journalists after cuts to Fairfax revealed a widespread ignorance about how systematically basic industrial rights have been rolled back.

On social media, many expressed their astonishment at learning that reporters were breaking the law when they walked out over massive job losses – something most people feel to be an inalienable right.

“[I] n Australia,” Long writes, “industrial action is generally unlawful. Workers have only limited rights to take ‘protected’ industrial action free from threat of fines, monetary damages or dismissal. The legal and administrative hoops workers and unions have to jump through before pursuing industrial action in Australia are onerous.”

The CFMEU faces additional restrictions, after the Turnbull government reinstalled the Australian Building and Construction Commission (introduced by John Howard and then abolished in 2012). As well as preventing most forms of traditional union protest, the new legislative regime curtails the ability of unionists to conduct on site safety inspections.

Why might that matter? Well, as Bernard Keane noted in Crikey last year: “Safe Work Australia data shows construction is the third most dangerous industry, after agriculture and transport. Moreover, as Safe Work data also shows, under Howard’s ABCC, workplace fatalities in the construction industry rose significantly, but they fell again once the ABCC was ‘neutered’, reflecting how the […] ABCC’s goal was to gut the CFMEU rather than protect workers.”

That was, it might be noted, the context for McManus’ remarks. “Quite often,” she said, “these workers have stopped when a worker has been killed on a building site.”

If the Grenfell Tower disaster illustrates why industrial safety might matter even to those not personally employed in construction, it also hints at the potential for a revival of trade unionism.

In Britain, the response to the fire became a focus for a visceral revulsion at austerity, a sentiment already apparent during the general election a fortnight earlier.

During the campaign, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn put forward an old-fashioned social democratic program – and, as a result, was subjected to astonishing media smear operation. But, not only did the mud slinging fail, it helped establish Corbyn as an alternative to a political mainstream from which most people feel deeply alienated.

In Australia, a full-throated union campaign would, without question, provoke a massive intensification of the abuse that’s already heaped upon the CFMEU. But there’s never been a time in which the public cared less for the opinions of the paid blowhards of the right. As the British election suggests, there’s a deep yearning, all across the world, for an alternative to the status quo.

Winning back basic industrial rights would not be easy. It would entail a major confrontation with the government and a willingness to engage in the civil disobedience that McManus flagged. It would necessitate a sustained effort to recruit new people into the ranks, making the case for solidarity to a generation that’s never held a union card.

But what’s the alternative?

A few weeks ago, we witnessed the astonishing sight of the governor of the Reserve Bank calling on employees to demand big pay rises from their bosses.

Why do workers need advice on wage militancy from a banker? The latest figures show union membership in Australia at a record low, with only 38% of public sector employees and 9.3% of those in the private sector paying dues.

They’re grim figures, no doubt, indicative of a movement in real trouble.

But unions that don’t strike can’t win pay rises – and without that, they won’t enrol members.

That’s why there’s no dodging the fundamental issue. If unionism is to survive, it must reclaim industrial freedom. For better or for worse, that means a fight.