TRANSPORT union RMT is prepared to build an alliance of militant unions outside the structure of the TUC unless a general strike is organised against the Tories’ vicious new anti-union laws.

Such an alliance would be prepared to deny anti-strike laws and take joint action, the union’s annual conference decided yesterday.

Delegates meeting in Newcastle gave unanimous support to four emergency motions — three of them identical — which also ruled out reaffiliation to the Labour Party, or affiliation to any other party.

This leaves RMT branches and regions free to give their support to individual election candidates whose political principles are in line with those of the union.

The principles were summarised as “to work for the supersession of the capitalist system by a socialist order of society.”

London Underground train driver Jayesh Patel told the conference: “People are well and truly worried about what is coming.”

He pointed out that the new laws, as well as setting minimum voting turnouts for strike ballots, meant that workers including firefighters and transport workers “would have to run a minimum level of services as well — a strike not as we know it.”

Mr Patel said: “I am sick and tired of going to London or Glasgow and waving a flag, and nothing happening. Flashes-in-the-pan demonstrations of anger are not going to win it for us.”

RMT senior assistant general secretary Steve Hedley agreed, saying that he too was “sick of marching up and down.”

He bellowed: “We should be calling on the TUC to organise a general strike to fight back against these laws. The TUC will, I believe, be reluctant to smash these laws.

“So we will have a coalition of the willing, like the FBU (firefighters), CWU (communications workers), parts of the PCS (civil servants) and parts of the GMB.

“We should organise, if necessary, outside the structure of the TUC to fight these laws. We should not go at the pace of the slowest. We have to organise this fightback.

“This is where our movement started. We have an absolutely proud history,” he said, quoting the example of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

“We must stand on the shoulders of our forefathers and mothers and break these unjust laws.”