Margaret Thatcher “crushed” the NUM, and with the fall of that industry came the toppling of the great British manufacturing age, to the point where now, we import everything – including coal. Having come for industry and the power those companies represented, the Tories are now coming for the workers themselves – if working conditions can be altered downward to “compete” with China then the imports can stop and once again Britain can be the sweatshop of the world. For too long we have been allowed weekends, sick pay, annual leave, pensions etc. etc. and the government have taken the first step of many, but also the biggest, in removing these rights and many more from working people.

The Trade Union Bill is a vehicle to destroy the effectiveness of trade unions and with that, any bargaining power and strength that workers have achieved over the past two centuries. Never mind that we already have the most anti-trade union legislation in the whole of Europe; the Tories, unsatisfied, wish to go even further than the six acts of Parliament between 1980 and 1993 which restricted unions’ ability to undertake lawful industrial action; banning secondary picketing, limiting ballots to postal affairs, crippling financial costs, notice period changes and the use of injunctions to curtail strike action. There are almost 250 steps a union must make before industrial action can now legally take place – if there is one place the Government is happy to see red tape increase, it’s in trade union and employment law.

The proposed legislation seeks to restrict industrial action to an icon of an age gone by, an anachronism belonging in the pages of museum guides and libraries as opposed to a last resort for workers who have been dealt a poor hand by their employer. By changing the threshold of union members voting we have a situation where the following could occur: imagine a workforce of 1,000 balloting for strike action: 499 vote in favour with none against. Under the new proposals, that is not a legal ballot for strike action as the turnout is less than 50%. They decide to vote again. This time 251 vote for a strike and 250 vote against. Despite support for action dropping by almost half, it’s a valid ballot as the turnout is greater than 50%. And this is the craziness of the Tory ideas… they are giving more power to the person who abstains from the vote, than the person who actively votes “no”; they are disenfranchising democracy itself. In principle, this would be the same as counting every non-voter at the next election as having voted Tory.

Obviously, as has been and will be continually pointed out, the thresholds demanded by this legislation would not be met by many MPs and members of the Cabinet. They cry foul at this saying a strike is just a yes or no (though many ballots contain options short of a strike making three choices) and we should compare strike ballots to referenda instead – like the Police and Crime Commissioner referendum which attracted a whopping 15% turnout of eligible voters and stands as a shining example of modern democracy.

Despite demanding such ridiculously high turnouts and all the hypocrisy that such a proposal comes wrapped up in, they maintain that trade unions must stick to arcane methods of balloting involving paper, envelopes and stamps. Time and again the TUC has asked to be able to ballot members in different formats incorporating electronic resources, but we are told that isn’t possible. In an age where a British Drone can be piloted in London to murder innocent civilians abroad union members can’t be balloted in an email or on a website.

Further changes would mean management could bus in temporary agency workers to cover striking members of staff, cynically undermining the action and putting low-paid temporary staff in very precarious and vulnerable positions. Similarly picket lines will be unlawful if more than a handful of people are on them, it will be deemed an illegal assembly and the people on them subject to arrest. At a time of unprecedented police cutbacks this is surely a ridiculous use of their time; that’s before we touch on the Orwellian notion of an “illegal assembly” of citizens.

The Tories and their media acolytes are attempting to show that trade union donations to the Labour Party are somehow hidden and obscure from those members. Most trade unions in fact have a general fund and a political fund and when you join, you select one of these funds for your own subs to be paid in to. The last time Tories attacked this link with the Labour Party and made unions ask members every 10 years whether they should keep their political fund has actually lead to an increase in TU Political funds; the fact is they don’t understand working people, because they’ve never worked! Though if Liz Kendall becomes the next leader of the Labour Party, Trade Unions will probably pull their political funds without any assistance.

Trade unions have given us weekends, eight hour working days, maternity leave, paternity leave, retirement, pensions, occupational health and safety, paid annual and sick leave, equality laws, the right not to be unfairly dismissed, pay rises, the minimum wage, collective bargaining, removed child labour and a given us a standard of living higher than that of the 1850s – a time that must seem golden to Tories and their City paymasters.

This is the fundamental truth of the Tories that dare not speak its name – they hate working people (as well as disabled and unemployed people too). They need them to work, but are disgusted by all that unfortunate humanity that comes with it. Throughout history the Tories have been the ones to campaign against every progressive reform that has taken place; economically and socially. They had to be brought kicking and screaming in to the 20th century and they’ve come kicking and screaming into the 21st, but this time they’re lashing out on the offensive against every single worker in the country. It won’t be said like this, and the media won’t mention it but this legislation works against the interests of every low and medium paid working man and woman in the country. Our press can’t be expected to report it accurately, it will just be Tory spin or ignored (presently as I write this the front and centre headline on the Daily Mail website is “Susanna Reid sends the Internet into overdrive when she suggestively sucks Angel Delight off her finger on Good Morning Britain”)

Join a union, write to your MP and counsellors, this is your fight as well as mine as a trade unionist. In Niemoller’s poem they didn’t come for the Jews first, they came for the socialists and the trade unionists. If the unions are wiped out, who knows what’s next.