TORIES were declared the “class enemy” at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday while unity among workers and their unions was flagged as the key to fighting back.

Fran Heathcote, president of Civil Service workers’ union PCS, was cheered by the huge crowd as she mounted a devastating attack on the Tory government.

But she said that opportunities for a united workers’ resistance had been lost when “solidarity was not turned into action” during the miners’ strike in 1984-85, and in 2011 when a one-day strike by more than two million public-sector workers in defence of their pensions was “betrayed.”

Ms Heathcote said that every government since Margaret Thatcher had attacked workers’ living standards with cuts and austerity.

“They treated trade unions as ‘the enemy within’ because they know that the organised working class is the only thing in society capable of defeating their policies,” she said.

“Millions of people plunged into poverty. Lives ruined. Children’s futures destroyed.”

She said that supermarkets are putting security tags on more products to discourage shoplifting.

“Are they putting them on champagne? Luxury goods?” she asked. “No, they are putting them on baby milk and nappies. When did such barbarism become acceptable in the fifth-richest country in the world?”

She said for 40 years governments had been determined to claw back every gain made by workers and their unions over decades.

“It’s not just because the Tories are nasty people,” she said. “They are. But every one of their policies has been intended to take back what we have fought for.

“For over 40 years they have cut and privatised. Holding down public-sector wages is not about saving money. It is a deliberate strategy to deny workers everything we have fought for. 

“They lie to us. Inflation is not being caused by rising wages. It is driven by profiteering. They want us all scrabbling for work, begging.

“These attacks have to be stopped. We are not all in this together. We do not share common interests with these people. We never will. These people are our class enemies.”

But she said individual unions could not fight alone.

“In 1984-5, the miners were defeated because the solidarity of working people was not turned into action,” she said.

“In 2011, the public-sector one-day strike over pensions was betrayed.

“We cannot look to politicians to come to our rescue. We must organise. We must unite not just in words but in action. We must campaign together. We must strike together.”

The 137th Gala’s theme this year was “Rise Up!” and there were more well-received speeches from a platform on which four of the five guest speakers were women.

Labour MP Zarah Sultana said: “We call this a cost-of-living crisis — but this is a crisis for our class, not theirs. 

“There are record profits, record wealth for billionaires and record inequality. 

“Let’s be clear — this isn’t a crisis because there isn’t enough wealth but because they are hoarding all the wealth ... It’s greed inflation!

“It’s not very fashionable in the Labour Party today to stand up for workers but let me be clear: when NHS workers walk out, I stand with them. 

“When teachers walk out, I stand with them.”

Sarah Woolley, general secretary of bakers’ union BFAWU, said every trade union member should recruit new members.

“Nobody is going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves,” she said.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said that where workers were fighting back they were winning.

He called on Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to honour his pledge to abolish anti-union laws and end the “disaster” of rail, water and energy privatisation.