Lindsay pressed “play” on her Walkman. Anything had to be better than this debate. She shifted in her seat again, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard chair. As an observer, she was seated apart from the main body of delegates, on a small raised dais at the back of the octagonal conference hall. The observers didn’t rate tables, unlike the delegates, so they were condemned to shuffling constantly through their agendas, order-papers and copies of Conference Chronicle. The latest edition had been the sole topic of conversation over breakfast for the members of the paranoid tendency, with its “revelation” that Laura Craig was a Special Branch plant. As the voices droned on around her, Lindsay amused herself by flicking through the dozen paragraphs again.

We can exclusively reveal today that full-time official Laura Craig gets more than one pay packet. The tough-talking broadcasting journalists’ organiser has another full-time job—stool pigeon for the Special Branch.

For the last fifteen years, her role has been to undermine the whole trade union movement by working to ensure that the former Journalists’ Union was such a laughing-stock that its own members could only hold it in contempt. That in turn meant that influential media figures judged the rest of the TU movement by the pathetic and politically naïve behaviour of their own union.

So those journalists in turn helped create the climate of opinion which allowed the Thatcher government to systematically strip working people of their rights and demolish their confidence in the whole TU movement.

Craig orchestrated the damaging strikes at BBC TV in 1984, ITN in 1986, IRN in 1988 and BBC Radio in 1990 and ’91. All of these actions damaged the union both financially and politically. She has also been a vociferous supporter of strikers in other sectors of the JU, an invariable face on every picket line. One opponent of her hard-line approach, general secretary “Union” Jack, once said, “You’ll never see a bandwagon rolling past without Laura clinging to it by her beautifully painted fingernails.”

Craig, 40, was recruited to secret government service when she was a student at the LSE. She was planted on the BBC graduate training scheme, and quickly became actively involved in the JU. In spite of that, she also achieved rapid promotion in the radio news field, something so unusual for a union official at Broadcasting House that BBC bosses are still citing her as an example that being an activist doesn’t stop you being a success.

When she applied for the job as full-time organiser for the broadcasting sector, she seemed the obvious choice. And so another union was infiltrated by those who have a vested interest in the status quo.