AT Parkhead Cross in Glasgow’s east end in May 2015 an elderly gentleman listed some of the reasons why he would be switching his life-long support for Labour to the SNP at the forthcoming UK General Election. Chief among them was the failure of Tony Blair’s Labour Government to reverse Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union legislation.

“In 1997,” he said, “the Labour Party had an overwhelming mandate to throw out those laws. They had a three-term majority – the strongest of any Labour government I can remember – and could easily have done this.” Nor was he convinced that UK Labour under Ed Miliband would be any more enthusiastic about supporting trade unions.

Quite how much confidence he might have in Sir Keir Starmer’s vow to repeal last week’s Tory proposals restricting the right to strike can only be imagined. The Labour leader said he would unstitch the Tory legislation if Labour win the next election, but nothing in his time as leader suggests this will be a major priority for him.

This man is so wedded to the status quo across the UK that he tiptoes around any tenuous issues in his slippers. So, Tory cabinet ministers favour a Union Flag amongst their soft furnishings during any television appearances. “I’ll have two of them please,” says Sir Keir. Any prospect of reviewing Brexit, following years of campaigning against it? “We need to make it work,” he says.

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Surely Labour MPs will be encouraged to join public sector picket lines to show solidarity with workers seeking modest pay increases after more than a decade of real-time wage cuts. “There’ll be no support for striking workers on my watch.”

And besides, the Tories’ proposed anti-union legislation is so sprawling and wholesale in nature that there are serious doubts that Sir Keir, perhaps the most supine, acquiescent and timid Labour leader in the party’s history, will have the stomach for the fight. His strategy thus far has simply been to keep quiet, mumble some social democratic slogans (in their broadest sense) and keep his head down.

He backs NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine without reservation by acquiescing in gifting more than £3bn of weaponry to another country’s armed forces. He fetishises our own armed forces. He cites Big Business as key to Britain’s economic recovery.

Last year he said: “Britain cannot rise to the great challenges of the day without the innovation of business. A political party without a clear plan for making sure businesses are successful and growing, which doesn’t want them to do well and make a profit, has no hope of being a successful government.”

A simpler form of this message reads: “Fill your boots, chaps and don’t mind us.” Any attempt by an incoming Labour leader to reverse anti-union legislation will be howled down by those Sir Keir wants “to do well and make a profit”.

When they come to his door wailing that public sector workers are adversely affecting the free run of commerce by choosing to strike whose side is he likely to take?

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Few of us don’t want to see businesses making a profit. But there’s a difference between profiteering and making a fair and reasonable profit. The first approach relies on making money by any means necessary and without any requirement to treat employees well and pay them a fair wage.

The second sees workers as partners in a firm’s future wellbeing. Sir Keir has had plenty to say about the importance of commercial profit for Britain’s recovery and rather less about paying those who make the profits a fair wage for doing so.

The Tories’ proposed legislation covers such a wide range of services which the Government considers as ‘lifeline’ that millions of workers will risk having their careers destroyed. The legislation covers the health service, fire and rescue, education and transport. Then there’s “decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel, and border security”. And what is a minimum service level anyway? If a Tory gets to decide this there will be no minimum about it.

We’ve been here before, of course. The Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 didn’t end for many of them when they went back to work. Mrs Thatcher wasn’t satisfied merely with destroying the NUM. She didn’t rest until she had made it impossible for many strikers ever again to earn a wage. An iniquitous alliance of judges, the police and bosses connived to punish, black-list and harass these men and their families – often on false and contrived evidence.

They were assisted in this by the national press and the BBC who portrayed the strike as a threat to the British way of life and chose to overlook the brutality of the police and the unfairness of sentences handed down by judges. The current wave of industrial action is being framed by many of the same narratives. It’s the strikers against the public.

When was the last time you heard a broadcast journalist ask one of the utilities bosses the percentage of profits that have disappeared into the pockets of institutional and private investors?

If you want to widen the concept of what a minimum service level is or what’s considered lifeline then perhaps we should look at how capitalism views such things.

During the pandemic an anointed number of Tory donors and their friends were permitted to put the health of front-line NHS workers at risk by providing PPE equipment that wasn’t fit for purpose. No one will be prosecuted or have their licence to operate removed.

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During the banking crisis of 2008 a group of banking executives placed the entire economy of the UK in jeopardy by telling us lies about the health of the financial products they were selling us. None of them faced any sanction and after a few years their multi-million-pound bonuses were restored.

In 2018 the construction giant, Carillion plc collapsed under the weight of a combined pension and debt liability of almost £5bn. Suppliers, sub-contractors and short-term creditors were all stiffed and several honest businesses ruined. The company’s executives had continued awarding themselves multi-million-pound bonuses even after it was becoming apparent to them that the entire business was in jeopardy.

In the last two years some of the world’s richest pharmaceutical companies effectively priced some of the poorest nations on earth out of adequate vaccination programmes. Rich western nations effectively threatened the health of millions in the Third World by using their wealth to stockpile vaccines.

Unfettered capitalism kills people. Trade unionism protects them from predatory greed. Yet only one of these forces ever faces the fury of the state.