Joy unconfined when I learned I was to be sent off to the seaside last week. Ice cream, sandcastles and flesh-ogling sounded to good to be true. It was. 

Instead eyebrow asked me to infiltrate the murky world of the trade unions. It was UNISON’s (Europe's biggest public sector union with more than 1.3 million members) national delegate conference.

Once I learned eyebrow had my wife and cats held hostage at an undisclosed location I was more than happy to agree to attend. 

The 21^st century is a strange place for the humble trade unionist. Class war is not what it was and there’s not the left/right split in politics so much anymore. Say what you like about Thatcher but she was someone young and old could hate with a heart-warming vehemence. 

So instead the issues are equal pay for women, rights for the ‘minorities’, pensions. All worthy enough but not the stuff of militancy. The fact that the delegates I spoke with were as likely to be sporting a copy of the Daily Mail as the Guardian was some indication of the changing face of the shop steward. 

As I placed my ‘Justice for Colombia’ flyer in my freebie bag (hand woven by a women’s collective in India and transported by boat - the holdall of the smug in other words), I took some time to look at the attire of the brethren and sistren. 

The left were usually easy to spot. Sandals were popular (but not for the beach methinks) as were single earrings. Something ethnic about one’s person was de rigueur as was a t-shirt with a right-on slogan and a pitta with hummus for lunch. Not brushing your hair seemed to be a show of defiance too for some reason. 

But the rest of the conference could have been on a day trip to Bluewater, or on a coach tour of the Cotswolds. Some of them even sported football shirts, which caused the lefties to mutter into their organic seed bread sandwiches. 

As for the actual business of conference, the motions, amendments and general sounding off was where the most entertainment was to be found, often unintentionally. 

Clichés were a running theme, with such pithy sayings as “it’s the poor what gets the blame”, “not a penny off the pay, not an hour off the day” and “soap, what soap?” being found in almost every speech.

Some of those speaking had amusingly generic polemic, where key words could be erased and replaced depending on subject. Swapping Tory for Labour for instance. Or Palestine for Cuba. 

There were some genuinely moving stories heard too. Grim tales of elder abuse, the plight of Colombia, the devastation in Burma, the evils of low pay and the need for equal pay. 

This was tempered with some fairly typically rabid old left style rants.

One of the more unbalanced motions being to support Palestine against the evil Jews.

Someone with a sense of humour put the Justice for Palestine and the Friends of Israel stalls virtually next to each other. There was of course by the end of the week a large wall between them. 

In the end though, the real story of conference was the battle between the ‘loony’ left of Glenn Kelly (of the Bromley massive) and the National Executive Committee. One thing true the world over is that the left just don’t like authority or ‘the man’. They’ll fight anything in power and sadly what they tend to lack is a sense of humour. 

It culminated on a final day where the vote was put as to whether UNISON would continue to fund New Labour.

All week Gordon Brown et al had gotten a pasting, but the vote went in their favour. It appears that since the times are uncertain, unions are conservative with a small c, they are about security not ambition. The left sloped off, muttering and the rest of conference heaved a sigh of relief. 

The week was over, the left was defeated, and Labour would be given one last chance. All was right with the world and isn’t democracy lovely? 

When the guest Zimbabwean trade unionist flew back home after conference he faced torture and death. Hard to laugh about that, and hard to take the bickering seriously. 

The one freebie everyone should have left with was a sense of perspective