YOUR freedom is important to Sajid Javid, business secretary. He wants you to know he has no interest in “a declaration of war on the trade union movement”. An “attack on the rights of working people” is the furthest thing from the UK Government’s mind.

If you need reassurance, the minister has proof. Ignore carping civil libertarians. His trade union bill won’t even “force strikers to seek police approval for their slogans or their tweets”. And who could say fairer than that?

It would be nice to confess to parody, but I have paraphrased only slightly. Javid really did use the words in quotation marks in the Commons last week. And he really did seem to believe that his line about slogans and tweets was the clincher.

Picture the scene, then. A hovel, circa 1848. Two Chartists labour over the banner. “I dunno, Tam,” says one. “Is ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ no a wee bit provocative? Maybe we should ask the polis ...”

Mercifully, history marches on. Where the Conservative Party is concerned it has a tendency to march in circles, but never mind. The energy of the likes of David Cameron and Javid is undimmed. They are spurred by a desire to emulate their Tory ancestors, the patriots of the Thatcher years above all.

Two things animate Conservative governments when thoughts turn to the “reform” of trade unions. One is the conviction that interference in industrial relations is always popular. Their friends in the media never discourage this idea, and it survives despite all evidence to the contrary. Curb unions, they fervently believe, and votes will be yours.

Then there is a belief, deep in the philosophical DNA of Tory politicians, that no strike is ever justified. They support the theoretical right, obviously, because only people who think the Tolpuddle Martyrs got off lightly say otherwise. But you can test the claim. Try to think of a dispute that has attracted the sympathy, far less support, of a serving Conservative minister. It never happens.

This year’s effort to bring trade unionists to heel is a vintage affair. The bill, which received its second reading last week, would impose a minimum 50% turnout in strike ballots, with strikes in the public sector also requiring the support of at least 40% of those eligible to vote. It would double, from seven days to 14, the notice unions must give before a strike. It would grant employers the right to use agency workers as scabs and stick unions with fines of up to £20,000 if pickets failed to identify themselves with official armbands.

No war? This government means to cripple unions, in part by ending the check-off system for collecting subs direct from a salary, in part by turning the certification officer into judge and jury of all trade union activity. If Javid’s legislation goes through, all unions, not just those affiliated to Labour, will have to ask each member whether they wish to pay the political levy and repeat the question every five years. It is a straightforward attempt to hamper political campaigning and damage Labour.

Some of the black comedy writes itself. What’s wrong, after all, with insisting that at least half of a workforce votes for a strike, with a double threshold for those in crucial public services? The fact that the Tories were elected with the support of just a quarter of the electorate provides one answer. The Government’s point-blank refusal to allow the unions to use online balloting might be another, more important clue to what is going on. Reform is not the purpose of this legislation.

And where, in terms of industrial relations, is the fire? There is no public agitation for new curbs on unions. Just 6.5 million employees were members by the end of 2013. That was barely one worker in four. Only 14.4% of those members were in the private sector.

The public sector has meanwhile lost 400,000 jobs since 2010 and will lose the same again, says the Office of Budget Responsibility, by 2018. Those who remain have laboured under pay freezes and, lately, a 1% pay cap. Yet there has been no great wave of industrial action. Javid’s bill, no doubt aimed at London commuters and readers of the Evening Standard, could change all that.

Such is the fear of Acas, employers’ organisations, and even the temping companies which would supply agency labour during strikes. None are keen on the reforms, perhaps because they know the facts. In 2013, there were 114 stoppages, just 50 of them in the public sector. In total, according to the Office for National Statistics, 443,600 working days were lost. Last year, the number of strikes went up to 151; days lost increased to 788,000. Is this the Government’s excuse?

If so, it is flimsy enough to be called transparent. As Paul Sellers, policy officer at the TUC, has pointed out, there were 1,206 stoppages in 1984 alone. Across the 1980s generally, the average annual days lost due to strikes was 7.2 million. Sellers adds the most amusing statistic of all: in the years 1939 to 1945, in the depths of the Hitler war, 1.89 million working days were lost annually due to strikes. The 2010-14 average of 647,000 is miraculously low by comparison.

The Government, you will be amazed to learn, is being dishonest. In 2014, most disputes – Sellers and the ONS again – were settled without strikes. In 56% of stoppages a total of just 250 days (involving all workers) were lost. As for the “bringing the country to its knees” headlines, the ONS records that in 2014, 63.9% of strikes lasted just one or two days. The level of disputes in the UK was 56% of the EU average in a country, as the invaluable Sellers reminds us, that loses 11.3 million working days a year because of stress and depression.

The attempt to base flagship legislation on these realities is a fraud of some magnitude. Javid, son of an immigrant who needed unions when he faced discrimination, might well have the rights of working people close to his heart. If so, he should attempt a question: what will remain of those rights if – rather than when – his bill goes through?

Javid’s colleagues, George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith, are stripping away social protections by the day. At the behest of big business, Cameron’s notion of EU reform is shaping up to be another assault on employment rights. The right to housing is fast disappearing while income inequalities make a joke of earnings growth. The minority who claim union membership are in the last redoubt. They might as well paint targets on their backs.

You can go all the way back to the 2nd Lord Liverpool and the 1825 Combinations of Workmen Act to find the origins of Tory attitudes. Those survive, ineradicable, down the generations. “There ought to be a law against it,” they cry. And then there is. In that world, the only good worker is an obedient worker. And the only good union is a tame union.

No war, Mr Javid? Perhaps if you put down your club someone might believe you.