The Guardian reported on Friday that Thatcher is to return to chequers – she’s been invited by Brown to discuss the global downturn. The only way Thatcher knows how to tackle a global downturn is by attacking the working class and using mass unemployment to achieve reactionary social change.

I can’t think of a greater insult to loyal labour party members than Brown’s invitation to Thatcher.

Derek Simpson et al at TUC didn’t have much of an argument to convince people to stay in the Labour Party and fight or a strategy to make the link work for trade unionists – their sole argument the Tories would be worse and that we should remember the Thatcher years. By doing this Brown trashes what little support there is left for him in the TU movement and demolishes Simpsons arguments by showing once again that New Labour are the conscious heirs of Thatcher and represent a continuation of her politics by other means.

In a few short weeks delegates from all our trade unions will gather once more in Brighton for the Annual TUC Congress.

Last year’s Congress instructed the General Council to:

Give full support to affiliated unions’ efforts to protect their members’ real and relative pay levels, to oppose the Government’s two per cent pay target for public sector workers, and to co-ordinate a joint campaign of opposition at national and local levels to the Government’s unfair public sector pay limit, including co-ordinated joint industrial action.

What have we seen as a result of this decision?

Well, on Thursday 24 April, members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at schools in England and Wales took strike action alongside members of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) in the Further Education sector and about a third of the membership of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).
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