REBUILDING trade unions in communities is key to defeating the far right, a packed Morning Star-Institute of Employment Rights (IER) fringe meeting heard today.

RMT leader Eddie Dempsey said a “conscious effort to remove the industries that formed the basis of the trade union movement” from the Thatcher government onwards had “left people with insecurity. Working lives are chaotic. There’s no stable work, no stable housing.”

Only restoring sectoral collective bargaining rights, enabling unions to raise wages across whole sectors, and the right to take solidarity action would stop unions’ continued decline, he argued. 

He issued a call for delegates to get behind a campaign to win these rights and warned against unions allowing sectional interests to override the fight for these “big-ticket items.”

CWU Scottish secretary Craig Anderson slammed the brass neck of politicians gathering at First Minister John Swinney’s invitation to warn against the far right, when the fury fuelling the growth of the far right is the result of their own policies. 

Workers “have no confidence in the political Establishment, no confidence in any of the parliaments, any of the leaders,” he warned.

Andrea Bradley, of the Education Institute of Scotland, called for political education equipping trade unionists for the one-on-one conversations with those receptive to far-right misinformation and propaganda, with James Harrison of the IER agreeing that “people like arguing online, but I’ve never seen any hearts and minds changed by conversations on screen.”

Morning Star editor Ben Chacko called for a focus on community activism, through trades councils and local Morning Star readers’ and supporters’ groups, so the left rather than the right is seen as the best conduit for working-class anger.