SIR: I was incensed by the article 'Thatcher joins union row'. How she came to become a Baroness I'll never know. She was the working class' enemy and made no bones about it, and still is!

I'll admit some unions were over dominant, eg dockers, car workers, but the engineering union was moderate, only one strike in 1973 and the National Tailor and Garment Union an absolute waste of time as those in that trade will know only too well.

So, as I see it, Thatcher would like a return to the real bad old days of sweatshops and slave labour, which were commonplace in Victorian times and during the Great Depression of the 1930s. I can never understand the mentality of the working class Tory. They must be masochists.

If there had never been unions from the start, the working classes would have been much poorer. Thatcher was particularly successful in bringing back those days, but surely is this a way of life that most people want?

B Howarth

Alexandria Drive, Westhoughton

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