Bernard Dineen: Prepare for the new Winters of Discontent

Last week, more than a quarter of a million civil servants went on strike over new rules to their redundancy pay. Almost all of them would still get between two and three years' salary – terms for which workers in private industry would give their eye-teeth. Not to mention index-linked pensions. The same goes for British Airways. Cabin staff on earnings far beyond the bulk of other employees are threatening to destroy the airline unless they get their way.

But, in some ways, what is happening on the industrial front is less important than the unions' role in politics. Thanks to Labour's shrinking membership, the party is dependent on union cash to keep going. As the public sector has expanded, the power now lies with the bosses of giant unions like Unite, which contributed a quarter of the total donations received by the party last year – more than 11m since 2007.

The union has set up a phone bank to canvass its members in marginal seats, with thousands of union activists contacting other members in preparation for a general election.

During the election, union staff will be given virtual leave of absence so that they can work for Labour, with resources being poured into the marginals. Some union bosses have already been installed in safe seats. Harriet Harman's husband, Jack Dromey, Unite's deputy general secretary, has just been chosen in Birmingham, and John Cryer, Unite's "political officer" is also on his way to the Commons.

The key figure in all this is Charlie Whelan, the union's "political director", who now struts up and down Downing Street like one of the union bosses in the 1970s. The key figure then was the boss of the transport union, Jack Jones, described as "the most powerful man in Britain" who combined his job with being, we now learn, a paid agent of the KGB.

At the moment the big unions are pulling their punches so as not to destroy Labour, but the advent of a Tory government would see their power really unleashed.

Most of the population have no memory of the Winter of Discontent, when the dead lay unburied, rubbish piled up in the streets, and school gates were locked and picketed. Within the next few years they could be about to experience it.

SCARCELY a day passes without some sob story about asylum-seekers. The tragic case of multiple suicide in Glasgow was a genuine tragedy but the attempts to exploit it are disgraceful.

The man who jumped to his death with his family appeared to be mentally unbalanced. He was "escaping" from Canada because he had uncovered "a plot by the Canadian Government to kill the Queen". This is rather different from the stories of asylum seekers driven to despair by a cruel Britain.

Most asylum seekers are not genuine at all. Eighty per cent are turned down but still remain in this country – an estimated 500,000 of them. I don't blame them at all. Who in his right mind would not exchange impoverishment in the Third World for a council flat in Britain? But it is the job of our Government to curb the flow. They should not be let into Britain in the first place.

Once they are here, it is virtually impossible to expel them. Hence the "immigration removal centres" which become sources of trouble.

The rules are clear. Genuine refugees from persecution should seek refuge in the first EU country they come to. But most of them pass through country after country in order to reach Britain. They know a soft touch when they see it.

WHAT is wrong with senior police officers these days? It is no wonder they are not too successful at catching criminals when they are spending their time being politically-correct.

A businessman was recently arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email that council officials said was "offensive" to gipsies. The email concerned a planning appeal by a gipsy and contained the phrase "do as you likey attitude". Council staff said this was offensive because "likey" rhymes with "pikey", a derogatory term for gipsy

The man was held in a police cell for four hours until it was established that he had nothing to do with the email. He had been told that he would be handcuffed unless he came voluntarily with the two police officers who invaded his home. His computer and other internet equipment had been seized. Now his DNA was stored on a criminal database and he had been fingerprinted.

Did the police apologise? Not a bit of it. A woman chief inspector said: "We have a legal duty to promote community cohesion. We are satisfied we acted appropriately." If this piece of lunacy is "promoting community cohesion", the English language has lost all meaning.