The new Employment Bill is winding its way through Parliament. Its provisions continue the policy of New Labour antagonism towards trade unions, while the government grovels to big business. Blair boasted that trade union rights in Britain remained the most restrictive in Europe. But why on earth does Gordon Brown feel the need to water down the Bill so as to defend fascists’ rights?

In 2002 ASLEF tried to expel a BNP member. It took a five year battle, going up all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, to establish that trade unions, like religious groups and political parties, had the right to include only those who shared their beliefs and ideology as members. So we don’t have to put up with fascists in our ranks.

The ECHR was quite clear. “Unions must remain free to decide, in accordance with union rules, questions concerning the admission to and expulsion from the union.” Since the Human Rights Act was passed into law ten years ago, judgements of the ECHR have the force of law in this country. So why is the government dragging its feet in implementing the law? What’s the problem?

The Bill actually uses weasel words so that, “It has fallen well short of what was required. Loose wording and additional provisions have meant that the bill, if enacted into law, would leave the unions in a worse legal position than before,” according to a letter sent to the press by leaders of Britain’s most important trade unions.

Tony Lloyd chair of the TU Group of Labour MPs said the Lords amendment offered "too much protection" to the individual at the expense of the rights of the unions.

"An individual fascist member who doesn't want to be a member of the same union as black, Jewish or Asian colleagues, his or her interests are put ahead of those colleagues to not want to be a member of a trade union with a fascist involved. That is an important freedom that we are seeing eroded."

The government’s formulation will allow fascists to milk the funds of our trade unions for their own murky political purposes with malicious litigation. Lloyd claimed that the BNP in its magazine was telling their members to join a union so they could reveal themselves before seeking a "five-figure payout" in compensation.

There were other issues in the Bill where honest pro-working class Labour MPs could draw a line in the sand between themselves and the government and the unthinking cattle and payroll vote in the Parliamentary Labour Party, together with their co-thinkers in the Tory Party. John McDonnell hailed one such vote on November 4th as, “A huge rebellion in a by-election week and sends out the clearest possible signal to the government that we are not doing enough on trade union rights."