The Independent — Even the most devoted supporter of the European cause would have to admit that some of the arguments deployed in favour of Britain’s continuing membership have moved from ‘project fear’ to ‘project silly’.
The TUC’s claim that a Brexit could lead to a cut in paid holidays for millions of British workers is one such. Perhaps someone should remind Frances O’Grady and the TUC that paid holidays in Britain date back to 1938, when they were introduced by Neville Chamberlain who, until Margaret Thatcher came along, enjoyed the distinction of being the most reviled of prime ministers so far as the brothers and sisters were concerned.
The TUC’s intervention betrays a fundamental flaw in its approach to the EU – that of expedience.
In the long decades before President of the EU Commission, Jacques Delors, invented the worker-friendly “social chapter”, the British unions were, on the whole, bitterly opposed to Europe because it deprived a British socialist administration of the levers of nationalisation, trade barriers and inflation to protect their members’ jobs. Now they see the EU as, to recall a phrase of an earlier era, socialism by the back Delors. If the EU were to revert back to being what was called a “bosses’ club” they would, presumably, switch sides yet again.
Looking after workers’ rights – including holidays – is arguably what the TUC is there for. But at a time when the steel crisis demonstrates a much wider competitive challenge for British industry and manufacturing, it would have been more appropriate for the unions to start talking about reforming Europe’s sluggish economy, rather than thinking about the nearest beach
