Workers at First London should have been on strike on Tuesday. They weren't, because the planned walkout was banned by the courts.
Members may be tempted to blame their union when strikes are ruled "illegal" by a judge.
But hang on. What if the law is outrageous and the government, the employers and the courts are all lined against workers going on strike?
No other country in Europe has such punitive anti-union laws. Anywhere else a postal ballot showing 80 per cent or 90 per cent in favour of strike action would never be stopped by the courts.
However here in Britain such overwhelming ballots for strike action can be deemed illegal unless every complicated rule about the balloting procedure is followed to the letter.
And if a strike goes ahead regardless the courts would have the power to award damages against the union of everything the employer lost on that day.
The Labour government has not just refused to repeal the Tories' anti-union laws. It has made them worse via a couple of very serious amendments to the legislation.
Following Labour's victory in 1997 the unions lobbied the government to change at least one aspect of the legislation, which required unions to give an accurate list of names of those to be balloted for strike action.
The government's amendments did do that, but more significantly they changed the whole emphasis of the legislation away from the Tories' original intention - to protect union members from their own union by ensuring strike ballots were independent and democratic.
New Labour's amendments made the whole rigorous balloting requirements and disclosure of information a protection for employers, so that they could adequately prepare for any strike action.
Employers can now claim that any deficiency in the balloting process affects their ability to prepare for a strike. In other words Labour has created a bosses' injunction charter.
An injunction hearing is not a proper court hearing. Unlike any other British legislation, injunctions can be used to stop strikes almost at the whim of a judge. All the employer has to do is present a possible case of a breach of the balloting process enough to satisfy the judge that the employer would have a chance of success in a court hearing.
In the case of First London, Firstgroup has actually tried to use a number of legal reasons to stop the strike, most of which failed because they were totally invalid.
But one succeeded.
Unite balloted its members for strike action and action short of a strike and a majority was returned in favour of both. The union scheduled action short of a strike within the first 28 days and then discontinuous strike action in the second month.
The employer argued that the two questions on the ballot paper constituted two different ballots and the one for strike action was not activated within 28 days. It argued the strike action planned for January 6 was therefore illegal.
The judge accepted that there was a legal argument here and issued the employer an injunction.
Unite and other unions dispute that by asking two questions this represents two separate ballots - they see it as one ballot with two different questions, allowing the union some flexibility in the type of action it takes.
In this case Unite used the mandate to start action within 28 days with an action short of a strike and step up the action in the second month when that failed. Unite has never had any legal advice to say that this is not valid and nor has any other union.
And in the recent BA case the judge granted an injunction on very alarming grounds indeed. BA argued that the strike should be ruled invalid because 800 or 900 members had been balloted for strike action who were then made redundant prior to any strike action being carried out.
BA Cabin Crew mass meeting in December
The judge accepted the employer's argument and banned the strike even though this would have made no difference to the 90 per cent-plus strike mandate affecting over 12,000 members.
Anti-union legislation is actually very clear. A union must ballot all its members in the bargaining unit affected by the dispute. It cannot exclude members who may not be there after the ballot papers are issued. This would provide grounds for a bosses' injunction too.
Unite had also correctly informed the employer of the members whom it was intending to ballot seven days in advance. BA did not raise any objections at the time, yet it would have known that some of the employees were to be made redundant.
However the law also requires a further notice to be provided by the union after the strike ballot has been completed and giving seven days' notice of any strike action.
This letter must declare an updated list of members who will actually be affected by the strike action. In other words the legislation accepts that there may be a difference between the numbers of workers balloted and those taking strike action, because of joiners and leavers.
This appears not to have mattered to the judge in the BA case, even though the union had complied fully with the letter of the law.
All this has taken place in a worsening political landscape.
The Tories are waiting in the wings to take power in the spring with a raft of new anti-union proposals. The employers are super-confident that they will get their way.
Testing the courts now paves the way for further legislation to "clarify" the law later in favour of the string of injunctions we have seen throughout 2009. There will also probably be some attempt to make public-service strikes even more restricted.
And new Labour's response? It has remained totally silent on the issue because it still calculates that it can only win the election by winning over Daily Mail voters. Improving trade union rights is not seen by Brown and Mandelson as an election winner.
The ability to peacefully withdraw our labour remains a fundamental right in any democratic country.
But we are in the grip of an offensive by employers eager to roll back workers' pay and conditions in order to extract maximum profit in this economic crisis.
Major employers are hiring specialist anti-union lawyers to try to find any possible breach of legislation to stop strikes. They want to break unions and hope that members will simply give up in frustration. They also hope that activists will turn on their unions and cause internal strife and division.
We must not give them the satisfaction.
By Martin Mayer, Chair, United Left.
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