"Extremely disappointing". I guess that from TUC general secretary Brendan Barber that counts as militant talk. Anyway, it is the sum total of the unions' reaction to Tony Blair getting the European Union to agree to an opt-out for Britain from the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The Charter was agreed in Nice in 2000, but will become legally binding only with the Reform Treaty agreed by EU leaders on 23 June. It is an attempt by EU member states with relatively wide citizens' rights, like Germany and France, to stipulate minimum rights in other EU states so that those states cannot undercut them in competition.
What bothered Blair and Brown? The Charter includes these provisions.
Article 27: Workers or their representatives must, at the appropriate levels, be guaranteed information and consultation in good time in the cases and under the conditions provided for by Community law and national laws and practices.
Article 28: Workers.. have, in accordance with Community law and national laws and practices, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements at the appropriate levels and... to take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action.
Article 30: Every worker has the right to protection against unjustified dismissal, in accordance with Community law and national laws and practices.
Article 31: Every worker has the right to working conditions which respect his or her health, safety and dignity. Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours, to daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave.
The qualifications - "in accordance with national laws and practices", and so on - make it very dubious that the Charter could ever be used to get European courts to overrule Britain's anti-union laws, or even to win something more than Britain's extraordinarily limited and reluctant regulations on working hours and holidays.
But Blair-Brown wanted to be sure. And the union leaders have allowed them to make sure, with no more than Brendan Barber's whine that it is "extremely disappointing".
Part of the reason is that chunks of the labour movement are still under the sway of "turn-back-the-clock" anti-Europeanism. The day after the Reform Treaty was announced, five Sunday papers - Sunday Express, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, News of the World, and Mail on Sunday - were up in arms, demanding a referendum. (The Independent on Sunday also favoured a referendum, but from a viewpoint supporting the Treaty).
The billionaire press was, of course, pleased rather than dismayed by Blair-Brown's opt-out from the Charter of Rights. What bothered them was the "threat to national sovereignty", although in fact all the Reform Treaty does is enable decisions, in some areas and from 2014, to be taken by majority (if they are backed by 55% of member states, representing 65% of EU population) rather than the cumbersome business of requiring unanimity of 27 states.
There is good cause for demanding more control by the elected European Parliament, in fact for demanding a democratic European Constituent Assembly; none for trying to restore or hold on to a Europe of walled-off nation states.
Unfortunately nationalist ideas still have sway in the labour movement. In France, many on the left were cock-a-hoop when a referendum in May 2005 voted no to the "EU constitution" for which the new Reform Treaty is a cut-down replacement.
They cited the fact that many people of leftish views had voted no to the constitution because it included neo-liberal language (mostly copied from other EU treaties already in force), and claimed that the no victory had rallied and consolidated a new left-wing political bloc, fatally undermining the right-wing French government which had called the referendum.
In fact the most vocally neo-liberal of that right-wing government's ministers has just won election as France's president by a large majority. Advances for left-wing politics cannot be built on the basis of nationalist ambiguities.
[This is a longer version of this article than in the printed paper]