Unity Is Strength

John McDonnell’s Bill is certainly an important contribution to the debate, even for those of us who would not necessarily wish to go as far as he would. We would certainly support building on the statutory right to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes, including by giving every trade unionist thus recognised the right to take industrial action, including sympathetic action of clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation, and including the restoration of immunity where the action enjoys all three of a secret ballot, seven days’ notice, and the official support of the relevant trade union.

Meanwhile, Andrew Miller’s Bill is doubly scandalous, because it is a Private Member’s Bill, and because it is being introduced eleven years into a supposedly Labour Government. Does it propose the nationalisation of top one hundred companies? No, it merely gives effect to John Smith’s promise, aeons ago, that temporary and agency workers would enjoy the same employment rights as everyone else. Within living memory, that was the sort of thing that Tory Governments used to do, never mind Labour ones.

Well, this Labour Government hasn’t done it yet, and left to its own devices would never do it. Sarah Teather made it quite clear on The Westminster Hour that the economically Far Right, eye-wateringly snobbish Lib Dems are viscerally and viciously hostile to this Bill.

So, is there any party that would do these things as a matter of policy? There is.