Having been brought-up in a staunchly unionised household, where the tele would be immediately turned-off if Maggie’s moniker ever graced the monochrome screen, it’ll come as no surprise that we were all delighted when the above mentioned slightly ooompah-esque 70s ditty from The Strawbs topped the charts during my rose-tinted winter of discontent. Go check out the clever word-play on YouTube and be prepared to be struck by the irony that it’s recorded in front of a German audience and the honky-tonk piano player is wearing a red-white-and-blue sequined union jack blazer that you’re only ever going to see these days outside parliament waving a distinctly purple and yellow banner.

The question that begs to be asked of today’s trades union movement is, faced with the greatest threat to prosperity in generations, where exactly are they? The TUC’s formal position is that they wish to “maintain workers’ rights and preserve tariff-free frictionless trade with Europe” which in reality means a customs union and single market ie Remain, but they’ve been noticeably absent from the debate by their conspicuous silence. Do trades unions speak for today’s working class? As Delia Smith once demanded of her beloved Canaries “Let’s be ‘aving you!”

Within traditionally unionised industries such as car-making and manufacturing, support for this stance is admittedly mixed, at best. Reports suggest that a majority of shop-floor workers (from Nissan in Sunderland and Jaguar in Solihull, to Toyota in Derby and Honda in Swindon), voted to leave, irrespective to the potential impact it will have on jobs and investment. With hindsight, the closure of shipyards and textile mills can be explained by their obsolescence but the decline of our indigenous car and plant manufacturing industries cannot be blamed on the EU and the impact of this deindustrialisation has been widespread and profound.

At some undetermined, yet imminent time in the very near future, Brexit will indeed mean Brexit, and our inevitable rush to the bottom will start in earnest. The impact this is going to have on wages, benefits, conditions, tenure and security of employ is likely to be drastic and even the Honourable Member for the Eighteenth Century, Jacob Rees Mogg, has recently admitted that it may take more than half a century for the British economy to recover from exiting the EU. Mind, he did then follow-up with the telling line “You don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor.” Nice.

It seems paradoxical that membership numbers have fallen dramatically at a time when it looks like they need strong and vociferous representation. However, with the perfect storm of fear, apathy, demographic and structural changes within the working population, restrictive legislation and technological changes, we should not be overly surprised by this. When you’re scraping by on a zero-hour contract, nip-and-tucking in the gig economy or being exploited by the permanent prospect of an insecure internship, then union membership ain’t going to be that high on your daily to-do list.

The absence of the trades unionist voice from the anti-Brexit cause owes a great deal to the current feeling of working-class alienation, fear and concern for the immediate future and an inability to ensure a relevance that resonates with today’s fragmented labour market.

I’m Carl - my phone isn’t smart, I’ve never sent a tweet, I'll never pose for a selfie, and I’m not my son's friend on Facebook. In fact, I’m no-one’s friend on Facebook. I read, I digest and I regurgitate with my spin on the things that matter. To me.

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