That I haven't the faintest recollection of that particular winter is really neither

That I haven't the faintest recollection of that particular winter is really neither here nor there - show me a picket line, and I can show you the finest set of prejudices Norman Tebbit could ever hope for. Sometimes I even forget to feel guilty.So it was extremely annoying when I had to get up a whole hour early on Thursday, to get out of tube strike-stricken London and down to Dorset in time for lunch. Lifeless queues of cars stretched deep into the Home Counties. Only the Royal Mail was absent from the road - it too was off on some Seventies revival day trip, and by Woking I was in quite some temper over the whereabouts of my grandfather's birthday card.After Southampton, the M3 trickles out, and the winding road takes you on into Dorset. Cream tea villages dapple the route, and the sign fluttering across one could easily, in a thatched charm oblivion, be mistaken for somethingabout a summer fete.

Instead, it announced that the annual rally to commemorate the Tolpuddle Martyrs would be taking place today.It is 162 years since six farm workers gathered there on the green under the sycamore tree to form a trade union, for which crime they were deported to Australia and are forever remembered as the fathers of trade unionism. And nobody seems much inclined to remind me any more. I can tell Winter of Discontent stories that would make your hair stand on end. Her ill-temper may be irksome, but she deserves a kindly smile - and most days I manage one And so it is with trade unions. I know I'm all in favour - it's just that I have such trouble remembering why.

It is he rather than Mr Michael Heseltine who is feared most by new Labour But Mr Clarke, like Macleod, will never lead his party.. Trade unions, like the old woman who lives up the road, are one of those things I know I should feel well disposed towards. My neighbour can be a cantankerous dragon, but - as I'm frequently told - she spent her whole life doing marvellous work in Africa. Nor was this last appearance wholly deceptive, if experience is any guide. Time and again Labour has vigorously attacked the Government's more lunatic proposals - from trade unions at GCHQ through water to the railways - only to accept them quietly once they have been put into effect. And what, one wonders, will new Labour do about Mr Peter Lilley's privatisation of benefits once it is in office?No, the hero of the week is Mr Clarke.