Tories should show some vigour and stand up to unions

‘Many of the strikers are among best rewarded workers in Britain’

- Leo McKinstry

AMONG the Tories' many recent failures has been their weakness in the face of the trade unions, which have been allowed regularly to hold the public to ransom through a mix of bullying, intransigence and greed. Yet instead of showing resolve against this wave of militancy, the Government has indulged in appeasement and vacillation.

One of Margaret Thatcher's greatest achievements was to tame the trade unions whose reckless addiction to stoppages in the 1970s had paralysed the country.

But the smack of firm Government that she demonstrated is absent today, particularly in the public sector where the trade unions are at their strongest. Almost 50 per cent of employees on the state payroll are trade union members, compared to just 12 per cent in the private sector, and it is in our public services where strikes are back with destructive vengeance.

Only this week, the train drivers' union ASLEF, led by Mick Whelan, is to hold more walkouts as part of its long-running pay dispute which has already lasted 22 months. In the same aggrieved vein, civil servants at the Office for National Statistics are to take action in protest at attempts to reduce the amount of time they can spend working from home.

A new mood of confrontation is sweeping through parts of our public workforce.