Orders of the Day — Business of the House

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:45 pm on 2 April 1984.

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Photo of Mr Cecil Franks Mr Cecil Franks , Barrow and Furness 9:45, 2 April 1984

We owe our position as a Government and, many of us, our Membership of the House, to the support and votes of trade unionists. We promised them freedom from trade union servitude and liberty from the trade union mafia which imposes its will by fear. They trusted us and we are being asked to betray that trust.

We find it absurd and repugnant that millions who voted against a political party, and the industrial cancer which is so enshrined in the constitution of the Labour party, are obliged to finance the organisation of a political party that they detest and abhor.

Compulsory membership of a trade union is simply industrial blackmail. The payment of the political levy is no more and no less than the extraction of protection money.

It is naive at the least, and dishonest at the worst, to believe that individual trade unionists—[Interruption.]