Richard Short is the Deputy Director of the Conservative Workers and Trade Unionists.
Since before the Labour Party even existed, it has been the belief of the Conservative Party that the law should not only permit, but that it should assist, the trade unions to carry out their legitimate function of protecting their members.
Not my words, but the words of Margaret Thatcher during a speech she gave within weeks of being elected leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition.
Despite the protestations of those on the left of politics, her words are as true now as they were then. Thatcher would never have won three successive general elections without the votes and support of union members. She knew this, and it was her strength.
Successive Labour prime ministers had no choice but to be grateful to the trades unions, as it was they that founded the party and that funded it.
But instead of making unions work for the good of the members, they directed their gratitude to the trades union leaders, who were the key decisionmakers when it came to financing the Party, sponsoring Labour MPs, and funding Labour candidates.
Every time Labour were in government, the trade union leaders amassed more and more power, to such an extent that they acted as a government in exile, pulling the strings of power.
In industry, at their height, union leaders were at the head of a parallel chain of command from the board room to the shop floor, and often held sway over strategic business decisions and often to the detriment of their own members. They went well beyond the essential role of representing and supporting members but became controllers of industry, standing in the way of progress and reform.
Such was the scale of the problem that despite Thatcher outlawing egreious union practices such as secondary picketing early in her first term, disproportionate union influence ran well into her second; archaic (often de facto hereditary, union chapel fathers still ruling the printing floors of Fleet Street well into the late 1980s.
It took two complete terms of office for Thatcher to pass power from the trades union leaders to their members. Even during the 13 years of Labour government, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown knew that turning back the clock would be disastrous for the British economy and never returned the barons to their former power.
With some lesser reforms in recent years it seemed, finally, that those days of wildcat strikes, flying pickets, and car park ballots were behind us. Until now.
Alas, with every new policy the Starmer Government casts itself in the mould of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan’s Labour Party. New Labour might have been profiligate and meddlesome, but it was not cut from the old socialist cloth; this government appears to have lifted its thinking straight from the 1970s.
Thatcher was elected by the working class to change things. To do that, she had to face and dismantle deeply embedded and deeply failing socialism to do it which it was in every pore of society.
It has been said by others that a person would get out of bed in the morning in their state-owned house, heated by state-owned gas, and lit with electricity from a state-owned supplier made by a state-owned generator, itself using state-owned coal. They would then get into their car, made by a state-owned manufacturer, listening to a state-owned broadcaster on the radio, fill up with petrol from a state-owned oil corporation, and arrive to work at a state-owned business.
All of this running, of course, at a loss, underwritten by the taxpayer and sucking the life blood out of the country. Not only could this all happen again, the reversion has already started.
Kemi Badenoch now has an opportunity to stop the rot before it sets in – and just like Thatcher, she needs the support of the working class to achieve this and, just like Thatcher, she needs to embrace trades unionism.
The old Conservative Trade Unionists were a tour de force, and enjoyed patronage not only from Margaret Thatcher but also the likes of Norman Tebbitt, who could never be accused of pandering to the unions but knew the value of the union member to successive landslide elections.
This is why the CTU principle to have a constructive relationship with trade unions is so important to the Conservative leadership. Through a relaunched CTU, the Conservative Party can champion that no worker should be in fear of reprimand from their own union for wanting to do their job, and no employer should fear incurring the wrath of a politically motivated union leader.
There is no denying the tensions between the Conservatives and some sections of the trades union movement. But to win the centre ground, the party needs the mass vote of the workers, and to be a party for everyone.
