MORE than 20 Labour MPs issued an open letter yesterday defending the role of trade unions in their party.

The MPs, including Trade Union Group chair Ian Lavery, criticised “crackpot tales” about trade union leaders and left-wing MPs in the gutter press.

“The whirling cesspool of some of the British right-wing media continues to smear trade unions, their leadership and their links with the Labour Party,” they wrote in a letter to the New Statesman.

And they gave a history lesson to the “nouveaux wing of the party” which has attacked trade unions, pointing out Labour was formed by them.

“Shamefully, there are many in our own party who see the aims of the unions as alien to their own and hurl around the lexicon of our enemies willy-nilly,” the letter continues.

“The phrases trade union ‘barons’, union ‘bullying’ or ‘sabotage’ should have no place in the vocabulary of Labour politicians.”