Chancellor Osborne's contemptible reference to trade unions as 'forces of stagnation' was vintage Tory contempt for working people and their representatives: 'I regard these people as the forces of stagnation, when we are trying to get the British economy competitive again, moving forward again.'http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12312417
Putting aside the irony of Osborne pontificating from the rich man's playground of Davos (where assorted deluded fools responsible for the economic and political crises gripping the world are engaged in mutual backscratching and graft worthy of Victorian Freemasons) - his anti-union bile is a throwback to Thatcher's 'enemy within' comments of the 1980's:
'Speaking at a private meeting of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs at Westminster, Mrs Thatcher said that at the time of the conflict they had had to fight the enemy without; but the enemy within, much more difficult to fight, was just as dangerous to liberty.'
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105563
It is also reminiscent of an infamous Daily Express editorial of the 1970's during the Winter of Discontent:: 'let us be frank. The low paid are low paid because they tend to lack skill and intelligence. The idea, which underlies much Socialist rhetoric, that the able, high-earning people should make sacrifices for the privilege of keeping alive the mediocre majority is grotesquly immoral. It amounts to a new system of exploitation compared with which 19th century laissez-faire capitalism looks like a system of philanthropy.'
Economic activity, patterns of ownership and technological processes may change over the years but one factor is constant - the hostility towards working people of the Conservative Party and its mouthpieces.
Trade unionists must show similar continuity, resilience and class solidarity in fighting back against them.
