BOSSES are using identity politics to divide the working class, the Morning Star annual conference heard on Saturday.

Public and Commercial Services union’s president Martin Cavanagh said: “We understood that everything that divides the working class weakens the working class.”

Professor Mary Davis, of the Communist Party and Women's Liberation Alliance, added that “individual identity is inimical" to collectivism.

She argued that women and black people are not a class but “complement” an understanding of a “class-conscious movement.”

Speaking in a personal capacity, GMB organiser Helen O'Connor argued that workers “are becoming disengaged” as unions and the left emphasise identity politics.

Morning Star editor Ben Chacko said: “The rise of the far right is the consequence of a left that is too insular and too self-absorbed.”

The conference also heard from a prostitution survivor from the Nordic Model Now! group, who argued that prostitution can never be safe.