Plaid Cymru has launched a review of Thatcher’s “damaging” industrial laws in a bid to double Welsh union membership, leader Leanne Wood announced yesterday.

Ms Wood made the pledge at a meeting of the left-wing Compass campaign group at the Unite headquarters in Cardiff.

She said the the trade union movement must be “re-energised” to fight right-wing advances in the wake of Ukip’s latest by-election success last week.

“Part of the reason the right has thrived is because an organised, mobilised, anti-Establishment, progressive alternative has had its foundations dismantled over a generation,” she said.

“We need to rebuild the movement, to strengthen it so that the mainstream media can no longer ignore it or marginalise its politics.”

Ms Wood said the party will identify “regressive” industrial relations laws that should be repealed and propose new measures to “create democratic workplaces and healthy industrial relations.”

Her speech adds detail to the vision of a “democratic economy” that she set out in her keynote speech at Plaid Cymru’s conference last month.

But Cardiff Trades Council secretary Ramon Corria pointed out that the Welsh government does not have power over trade union and employment legislation.

He told the Star: “I would like it to happen but they only have three MPs and we don’t have the powers in Wales.

“It’s just a populist approach because she’s in the Unite building saying it. I can understand her saying it but unfortunately we live in the real world and I can’t see it happening.”