ALAN Clough (Your Letters, July 17) is obviously a hard man to convince. Be that as it may, here is my final word on the subject.

I belong to what is euphemistically known as "the working classes" (at least that is what Socialists call them; Conservatives just talk about people, not classes).

My family were all "working class"; not a supervisor, a charge hand, a foreman or a manager among them. All "blue collar" workers, and most of them loyal trade union members.

I left school at 15 to become an apprentice fitter. I wasn't asked if I wished to join the relevant union, I was told that I must. I wasn't asked if I wished to pay the political levy to the "party", I was told I must. And when I demurred, I was victimised unmercifully by the trade union officials.

If they had taken the trouble to explain sensibly what the aims of the trade union movement were, and how it would benefit me, they might just have convinced me. But they didn't. Instead, they tried to browbeat me into submission.

Now anyone who knows me, knows that I will not be intimidated. And when, a few years later, a union official at my work place threatened my wife with GBH in order to "persuade" me to vote in favour of strike action, I had had enough. Having witnessed trade union militancy before that, it was the last straw.

I have made the point before and I do so again. I am not opposed to the trade union movement. I accept all that Alan Clough says about it. I would be foolish to do otherwise.

For my beliefs, I have been intimidated, threatened, hackled and even spat on.

All that has merely made me more committed. I owe allegiance to Queen and Country and nothing else. My flag is the Union flag, not the Red flag. God save the Queen.

TRUE BLUE TORY

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