Stotty on Sunday: Brothers' grim truth

TONY Blair has never been much of an admirer of the Brothers and now he's not seeking re-election he doesn't even have to pretend. So he could grab them where it hurts - by the short and curlies of their own composite motion.

Truth is, they gave him an open goal. It's inconceivable any sane politician would give a second thought to the TUC conference demands for a return to secondary picketing. It was precisely that tactic that allowed unions to make Britain ungovernable in the 1970s, and if that is the best the our fraternal brethren can do, they would be better off keeping their collective mouth shut.

It is a measure of the impotence of the unions that the more marginalised they become, the more overblown the language employed to disguise it. Transport workers' leader Tony Woodley said Blair was "out of touch with the mood of the people and Labour supporters" by not backing a return to secondary picketing. That is laughable - much of Blair's success in resurrecting Labour was because he convinced voters the party was no longer in hock to the unions.

One of the many drawbacks of union leaders is that they are good at demanding democracy, fairness and proper representation for all, but not so hot when it comes to practising it. Remember the block vote where Labour conferences were hijacked by a handful of union leaders wielding millions of votes? Remember Arthur Scargill destroying the miners' union by embarking on a national strike without a ballot of his members?

Last week, even as Amicus leader Derek Simpson was talking grandly about whether he would be prepared to support Gordon Brown as the next Prime Minister, his union suspended three officials. All because they might support Simpson's rival to run a merged super- union made up of 2.6million members of Amicus, the GMB and the Transport and General Workers. Very democratic.

Which brings us to John Edmonds, former Big Brother of the GMB. He now faces an inquiry into claims he employed private detectives to spy on his colleagues. It is also reckoned the GMB has spent pounds 4million fighting a series of allegations of sexual harassment and bullying by some of its own people. All this from a union that has launched a campaign against firms snooping on workers.

What is so frustrating about this new generation of union bosses is they suffer from the same pompous views of themselves as their predecessors, who were largely responsible for Labour's wilderness years.

Their pretensions are even more irritating because there is a vital job for the unions to do. The gap between rich and poor is widening. There is a serious injustice in large companies contracting out jobs - and people's lives - to unscrupulous companies such as Gate Gourmet who misuse the weakest in our society. There are big questions to be asked about workplace "flexibility" - the flipside to that coin is exploitation. Above all is the urgent question of pensions.

The unions should seize the moment to talk to an outgoing Prime Minister and his successor. Grandstanding, self-promotion and secondary picketing won't work. They tried that in 1979. The result: three million unemployed and the destruction of the union movement for two decades.

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