Thirty years after the “winter of discontent”, some UK trade unionists appear stuck in a 1970s timewarp. The motions for this week’s annual Trades Union Congress are as depressingly familiar as Brighton’s windswept seafront. Calls for a repeal of a long-standing ban on secondary strike action and to make the rich pay higher taxes have little chance of being adopted by the two main political parties. To win serious influence over policy debate and save themselves from irrelevance, trade unions need ideas. Making the labour movement more attractive to potential recruits would be a start.

The Labour party’s traditional paymasters, the unions can claim policy successes since 1997: the minimum wage, new workplace recognition laws, more protection for employees and the government’s agreement to implement European Union rights for temporary workers.