SIR – A couple of weeks ago former chairman of Worcester Liberal Democrats Alex Kear said: “I also applaud our PM for getting people to realise the best way to come out of the financial gloom is through working together for the common good” (Worcester News, June 12).

At the same time, he declared that he was “antitrade unions”.

That champion of Labour party endorsement John Shearon also took a swipe at the trade unions ‘Have unions learned nothing from 1980s?’ (Worcester News, June 25).

At a time when working people are at the mercy of laissez-faire capitalism at its most greedy and corrupt, when our coalition Government attempts to heap all the blame on poor people by a campaign of vilification against the welfare state, when the solution to the deficit is mass redundancy underpinned by a denigration of the public sector, how do Messrs Kear and Shearon think working people can defend themselves except through collective action through their trade unions?

If trade unions are to be criticised at all, it is for handing over millions of pounds to New Labour who did absolutely nothing to defend the unions but, like Tony Blair, regarded them as an embarrassment.

My advice to all workers is to join a union and, where under threat, fight for their jobs, not just lie down under the Lib Dem/Tory steamroller.

PETER NIELSEN
Worcester