The industrial dispute over employing Italian workers at Total’s Lincolnshire oil refinery has already provoked sympathy strikes among other trade unionists. The worry should be that it will be a catalyst for a new bout of violence on the streets.

Perhaps the workers withdrawing their labour in sympathy at unrelated sites and in unrelated industries genuinely see a principle over foreign workers and perhaps they consider walk-outs a legitimate way to demonstrate the strength of their belief. Or perhaps it is trigger-happy union leaders looking for a way to show their strength and eager for a dispute.

That latter scenario would be a worry – especially when industrial output is hit by a recession, nevermind bad weather – but it is at least taking place within the context of a formal trade union structure. The real concern is who else is waiting to exploit this situation in ways that ignore the law. The danger is that Killingholme becomes the excuse of those wanting to overthrow not just this government but all government.

You do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to accept that there is a small faction of the community eager to disrupt structured society. It is very small, however. It thus needs allies, and by waiting for issues that attract wider attention, supporters are unwittingly recruited.

Whether the destructive faction wants to replace current society with another or simply wants to damage the existing structure, it waits for an issue such as Killingholme and allows the workers and union members to start the swell of dissent. The pattern is then for well-meaning academics, celebrities or MPs to promote the cause, lending their respectability to picket lines, demonstrations or rallies.

That encourages widespread public support. And it is then that the destructive element uses the public meetings or rallies to turn peaceful protest into violent assembly. Vehicles or buildings are damaged, people – especially police and other symbols of order – are injured.

Over the years demonstrations such as those against the export of live animals from Brightlingsea or against the poll-tax in central London have been hijacked by a minority seeking to turn protest into battle. More recently rallies against the Iran War or Gaza have been infiltrated by people there solely to cause trouble. The ‘Stop the City’ protests were similar excuses to bring violence to the streets.

Ordinary people with a genuine protest are left confused and disappointed that their widely-supported cause has been overtaken by a minority, but the fact that the troublemakers arrive with weapons and masks shows their behaviour is not a spontaneous reaction by people holding sincere views.

The Total dispute could too easily be the fuse for a bigger explosion. “Jobs for Britons” is an emotive slogan. Ministers must settle this dispute as soon as possible, not only to right any wrongs to Lincolnshire workers and not only to prevent Britain’s industrial output shrinking even further; they must resolve it before it becomes a rallying point for the disaffected who want to use innocent workers as warriors in their private war with society.

If such talk is alarmist it is because the danger is real. France has already had a taste of violent protest.

People whose jobs, pensions, homes and savings are threatened by recession make easy recruits for those who have no interest in any of those matters. The sooner government quells this uprising the better for every worker and every business in the country.

Share this: