Dawn of new age of industrial unrest | Web encouraged every skilled man to strike | Comment: British Jobs and British Workers | ‘We’re used and abused by greedy employers’ | Q&A: British industrial strikes | A whole new European world of work

The phrase had barely left Gordon Brown’s lips before it was hung around his neck. He may not have known it but when the Prime Minister promised “British jobs for British workers” in his Labour conference address in 2007 he was echoing a slogan used by the British National Party.

Nor did it take long for opposition MPs and some Labour backbenchers to point out that European Union rules ensured that any attempt to realise such a policy would be illegal.

Within weeks ministers had to admit that foreigners would be as entitled to enrol on new state-funded training courses as Britons.

Worse, at about the same time the European Court of Justice was making it harder, not easier, for nations to shield their native workers from the effects of a globalising labour market.

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, says that the Lindsey oil refinery dispute was inevitable. “This is something that has been submerged while there was economic growth but was always going to surface when the music stopped.”

It was just sheer misfortune that the music stopped for Mr Brown while he was rubbing shoulders with the world’s most senior bankers in Davos. He had intended to sound a warning against protectionism at the World Economic Forum. Frantic calls from No 10 alerting him to the unfolding drama back in Britain led to some hurried recasting.

Mr Brown began to appreciate the strength of feeling stirred up in Labour’s industrial heartlands. Pat McFadden, Lord Mandelson’s second-in-command was drafted in to announce an investigation by Acas. He stopped well short of condemning the strikes despite the Government’s view that yesterday’s actions were illegal.

Government sources insist that the Total case arises from a 1996 European Union directive on “posting of workers”. The unions and some Labour MPs believe that the so-called Viking and Laval rulings in the European Court in 2007 are to blame.

This judgment, MPs feared, could be used by employers to bring in foreign workers and undercut existing pay agreements but objections made during the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty last year were brushed aside. But senior insiders predicted that the recession would lead the Government to be far more aggressive in invoking “social impact” considerations when taking procurement decisions.

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