State schools 'should teach pupils right to strike'

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Union leaders are urging Gordon Brown to put ‘trade unionism’ on the National Curriculum alongside compulsory subjects such as English and maths.

The 250,000-strong Communication Workers’ Union - formerly led by Health Secretary and potential Labour leadership challenger Alan Johnson - also wants State funding for union officials to visit schools and teach about the right to strike.

Striking tanker drivers outside Stanlow Oil Refinery in Cheshire - union leaders suggest strikes should be added to the curriculum

The demands, in a motion to next week’s annual union congress at Brighton, will reinforce fears that union barons bankrolling the Labour Party are determined force the Prime Minister to lurch to the Left. The union has donated £4.6million to Labour since 2001.

Its motion for the congress - which will be attended by Mr Brown - calls on the Government ‘to increase opportunities to learn about trade unionism within the National Curriculum, including specific reference to our contribution to the development of a civilised society’.

Last night, the CWU - which represents workers at the Post Office as well as BT and the cable-television sector - did not deny that union chiefs hope the plan will be a recruiting sergeant.

But it added: ‘We are not trying to brainwash children.’

Pupils in France strike in support of a teacher who lost his job

The Tories seized on the proposal as proof of a new drive to get a beleaguered Mr Brown to agree to a raft of Left-wing policies - including demands at next week’s congress from giant union Unite to scrap ‘anti-trade union’ laws and bring back secondary picketing.

Conservative chairman Caroline Spelman said: ‘It risks taking the country back to the 1970s.’

The latest Electoral Commission figures on party donations last week revealed that trade unions donated two thirds of Labour funding in the three months to June.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said existing subjects already give ‘scope for schools to cover the development of the union movement’.