Watching the footage of the debates at the TUC this week can’t have been a happy
experience for anyone on the left. I understand the leadership’s decision to hold an “austerity Congress”. I can also understand why the unions want to take the argument on
cuts and pensions to the government. It is their job to protect the interests of their members using tactics up to and including the withdrawal of labour.
The trouble is that the scaled-down version of the once-mighty Trades Union Congress just didn’t feel grand enough, heroic enough or scary enough, despite the apocalyptic tabloid headlines. The threat of a mass walkout in November and allusions to 1926 just drew attention to the pint-sized nature of the event. Somehow I don’t feel the pictures of Len McCluskey voting for strike action sitting in a plastic chair in what looked like a school gym will have sent a chill though the bones of the ruling class.
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