by John Foster in Glasgow

UNION leaders promised to break the law if the Tories legislated against their funding and right to strike as they addressed thousands of people in Glasgow at the weekend.

More than 4,000 protesters crammed into Glasgow’s George Square for the anti-austerity rally jointly organised by the STUC and People’s Assembly Scotland on Saturday.

Amid a flurry of banners STUC general secretary Grahame Smith launched a scathing attack against government austerity, which he said made “no economic sense” and was “intended to entrench the economic and political power of a self-interested, privileged elite.”

He then turned on the government’s Trade Unions Bill, which introduces a 50 per cent threshold for strike ballots and requires members to opt-in to political donations.

“No-one should be in any doubt about the threat to the the trade union movement posed by these proposals,” he said.

“It is inevitable that if implemented these proposals will place unions in conflict with the law.

“We would not be standing here today if our predecessors had not broken bad laws. Across the world, civil and human rights have been won and protected only because people united to break bad laws.”

But he added that the trade union movement needed the support of its political and civil society allies if these attacks were to be defeated.

Unite Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty echoed the sentiments, warning that the Tory government was there to finish the work started by Margaret Thatcher. “They want to destroy our movement,” he bellowed.

“There is power in a union. We will not bow. We will organise the unorganised. We will defy their anti-trade union laws and not accept their austerity.”

Firefighter Denise Christie, who spoke for the Scottish Labour group Campaign for Socialism, called for a co-ordinated fightback that was cross-party and cross-union. “The fire service has already seen the loss of 400 jobs and it has been principally women who have been targeted,” she said.

And to cheers she added: “The Labour Party has the chance of a new start with Jeremy Corbyn. Let’s take it.”