LABOUR’S Ian Lavery mounted a barnstorming defence of the party’s trade union links yesterday, declaring: “United we stand, divided we fall.”

The Wansbeck MP made a sweeping plea for a radical reforming manifesto at Unite the union’s annual conference in Liverpool.

“We need excitement and an attractive manifesto to reach out to all those who feel disenfranchised,” he demanded.

“We need a reversal of the ideological attack on living standards. We need to tackle the problem of the working poor.”

Ridiculing smears on unions by fellow MPs who “think they know everything about everything,” Mr Lavery said it was time they read up on their history.

“A lot of these MPs believe it was the Labour Party that introduced the trade unions rather than the fact that it was ordinary working people in trade unions that formed the Labour Party.

“At the beginning of the 1900s there were huge problems with the health service — we didn’t have the NHS.

“There were huge problems with wages, terms and conditions, with poverty, with child poverty.

“That’s why the Labour Party was formed — to give a voice to ordinary people in Parliament.

“That’s what the party leader should remember.”

Mr Lavery — chairman of the parliamentary Trade Union Group — praised Unite for stripping funding from MPs who do not share its views.

And he backed its policy to get more working-class MPs in Parliament, condemning the Labour leadership for backing a probe into Unite’s role in the Falkirk candidate selection process.

He thundered: “It’s OK for the hierarchy to organise behind the scenes, but when ordinary people, the trade unions, try to organise they bring the police in.

“What an absolute disgrace.”