UNION members in Sefton, Merseyside, have been dragged in front of the courts by the local council over their decision to defy anti-union laws. The council has no overall control, but the largest group is the Labour Party.
Nigel Flanagan and Martin Murphy, secretary and chair of the UNISON branch, were taken to court after they organised a democratic vote which decided to go ahead with a one-day strike on June 28.
The strike was a response to council plans to extend privatisation under a scheme called "externalisation". This would mean the privatisation of whole council departments.
When the branch asked regional official to organise a ballot for action, they refused.
So the branch went ahead anyway, carrying out in practice the UNISON line of resisting externalisation.
UNISON nationally has repudiated the one-day strike.
More than 600 workers turned up to demonstrate their solidarity when the two branch officers appeared in court.
On June 28 more than 1000 workers took part in strike action. So successful was this action that at a meeting of the day of the strike, the council completely dropped its privatisation plans.
But the council also decided to pursue the local UNISOn branch through the courts for breaching the anti-strike legislation.
When Flanagan and Murphy appeared in court on July 19, the 600 people demonstrating in their support included delegations from UNISON branches all over the country, as well as firefighters, printers, rail workers and BBC workers from London.
At the hearing at Manchester Crown Court, which was adjourned. UNISON national officials gave evidence explaining their repudiation of the strike and how they had worked to stop it. UP TO 50,000 mainly young people joined the march through London on July 24 against the Tory Criminal Justice Bill