AN insidious suite of reprisals comes into play when the UK establishment attempts to disparage lawful trade union activity.

The fix is put in early. Helped by a production line of BBC managers whose careers carry them back and forth between Tory headquarters and Broadcasting House, any industrial action is framed as the unions versus “ordinary people on the street”.

The red-top tabloids, owned by billionaires and aristocrats whose fortunes rest on Tory occupancy of 10 Downing Street, then set about dismantling the reputation of the men and women who lead Britain’s most effective trade unions.

Mick Lynch, the clever and resourceful leader of the RMT, is currently drawing their fire. At any right-wing tabloid near you he is currently cast in the role of a malevolent, anti-Christmas demon hell-bent on spreading misery.

Yet, in the midst of it all, there is also some joy to be had. This is provided by television dullards like Richard Madeley and a host of Sky News presenters whenever they attempt to interview Mr Lynch. Watching the RMT leader again and again as he wipes the floor with these establishment shills, laying bare their ignorance and pettiness, is as satisfying as watching re-runs of your favourite football team’s best goals. You never tire of them.

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What these people – the journalistic equivalent of royal chamberpot-holders – always fail to grasp is that strike action is the only weapon that working-class people possess when seeking fair and just pay settlements from governments and bosses.

What’s never highlighted is the vast arsenal of weapons available to employers when directing unfairness at work. Industrial action is not confined to unions. Britain’s public and private sector employers can choose from a wide selection of punitive micro-aggressions when workers try to organise themselves.

The most obvious ones are pay cuts or increases that are so small they don’t match rates of inflation. Britain’s nurses have endured years of these, to the extent that, over this period, their wages have actually diminished. Refusing to invest in making shop floors safe and desirable spaces in which to work is also a common thread running through Britain’s manufacturing landscape.

The Tories’ anti-union laws (which Labour in power did little to unstitch) criminalised the free movement of secondary picketing and imposed unreasonable thresholds that had to be met before strike action could be considered legal. And even though industrial action met the legal requirements, striking workers could be docked wages.

In the private sector, summary dismissal; zero-hours contracts; punitive measures against any suspicion of trade union activity and electronic monitoring of workplace performance are all features of Britain’s employment landscape. When mergers and takeovers happen, workers whose loyalty and industry helped build profits are told to re-apply for their jobs at reduced rates of pay or are simply “let go”.

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Meanwhile their bosses will receive millions for selling off the company, having done nothing to protect their employees. A textbook example of this came when Elon Musk bought Twitter from Jack Dorsey. Mr Dorsey said he “grew the company too quickly”. This is code for “I made vast profits very quickly and it’s been a blast knowing you all.”

The range of options open to the resourceful and modern employer is reinforced by blacklisting, the evil practice by which employers (and this includes the public sector) can destroy the lives of people deemed to be troublemakers and their families. This tactic proceeds underneath the radar and is difficult to detect, but it remains commonplace.

This was one of the chosen instruments of Margaret Thatcher and Britain’s police and judiciary in 1984-85 to ensure that not only would the miners be defeated but that their communities would be so demoralised they would never again be in any fit state to resist.

Any dip in profits can be used to throw workers and their families onto the scrapheap. It doesn’t matter if a company’s profits are annually measured in hundreds of millions. At the first hint of shareholders’ dividends being slightly eroded, the lowest-paid employees are considered an unacceptable burden.

The most recent and egregious examples of this were evident during the first few months of Covid-19. That’s when companies such as British Airways – which had recorded profits of several billion pounds in the years prior to 2020 – still felt moved to lay off thousands of workers. The pandemic was a festival of increased profits for the large retail chains. None of these were accompanied by concomitant increases for the staff who risked infection each day on the shop floor.

We’ve also learned that dozens of anointed individuals and their families held the country to ransom during the pandemic by charging obscene prices for emergency PPE equipment. This was facilitated by a government that saw this as an opportunity to reward loyal party donors. Following revelations about Michelle Mone’s activities and those of 20 other firms who cashed in, there’s been hardly any mention of these in the Tories’ lapdog publications. Instead it’s been open season on Mick Lynch.

To facilitate Britain’s richest entrepreneurs in restoring their pre-pandemic profits, the UK Government favoured them with billions of pounds worth of tax cuts. And as they did this they found billions more to assist NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine. And all the while, choosing to ignore the Yemeni victims of Saudi Arabia, its Middle East allies, in their military onslaught in that region.

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At the weekend Rishi Sunak was given space in one of his favoured media outlets to tell us why there is no money to fund public sector workers’ pay increases. These employees had risked their lives and health to keep Britain functioning during the pandemic while the Tories partied and their supporters exploited it to enrich themselves.

“Tackling inflation, stabilising the economy and bringing the cost of living down is my number one priority,” says the man whose billionaire heiress wife used non-dom tax status to elude Britain’s tax obligations. “All massive pay hikes would do is kick us into an inflation spiral and we would all be worse off. The poorest would be hit the hardest.”

Rarely have so many falsehoods been present in so few words. Mr Sunak and his supporters will never be worse off. And the huge dividends paid to the predators of our privatised public services and utilities are much more damaging to economic stability.

The pay hikes are not ‘massive’; they will merely mitigate the effects of years of below-inflation wage settlements. Among the “poorest” who will be “hit the hardest” are those workers this billionaire Prime Minister now seeks to demonise.