The village of North Killingholme is an unlikely flash point for national industrial unrest.

But at the end of January, the Lindsey oil refinery on the outskirts of the village, owned by the Total, the French energy company, became the epicentre of wildcat strikes, the impact of which was felt in Downing Street.

The trigger was foreign workers in a country gripped by recession and grappling with surging unemployment. Unions grumbled that foreign companies based in the UK were bringing in overseas workers to do British jobs.

Total, which refines crude oil into diesel at the plant, decided to bring in hundreds of Italian and Portuguese contractors to work on a new £200 million unit. Six hundred British contractors walked out.

Within days, hundreds of workers downed tools at Scotland’s power stations and oil refineries in a series of wildcat strikes to show support for colleagues across the Border.

In South Wales a crowd of workers picketed outside the main gates at Aberthaw Power Station. At the Wilton chemical complex on Teesside, 400 men gathered outside the plant behind a banner demanding “British jobs 4 British workers”. The dispute spread to a dozen power stations, oil refineries and chemical plants.

The demonstration sparked the most widespread direct action since the fuel protests in 2000. But it was resolved within a week after unions and management reached an agreement over an additional 102 jobs offered to British workers at the site. Pat McFadden, then Employment Minister, secured a deal with the engineering and construction industry that foreign contractors would always consider the local workforce first.

But having promised “British jobs for British workers” in his 2007 Labour Party conference speech, Gordon Brown had hit the raw nerve of economic nationalism.

Unions demanded that the Government push for measures in Europe to protect British jobs. They called for the reversal of a 2007 ruling by the European Court of Justice which made it easier for companies to circumvent British pay deals by hiring foreigners on lower wages.

Six months on, the same threat of widespread wildcat strikes is back. And with 2.3 million unemployed in the UK — a number that is expected to rise to 3 million next year — the tensions remain high. But this time round, the trigger is different. Total, bruised by the strikes earlier in the year, appears to have delivered a stark warning to workers who will vote on a formal strike ballot in a few months. Down tools, and you may not have a job to return to.

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