IT IS THE timing, rather than the speculative substance, of the warning today of mass job losses in East Lancashire's defence industry that ought to raise eyebrows.

For what is one to make of the deliberate withholding until today - polling day - of a trade union's predictions of widespread redundancies in Royal Ordnance factories because of the government's "dithering and dodging" in placing a vital new order for ammunition for the armed forces?

It positively reeks of a deliberate scare to cost the Tories votes.

For the prediction comes without proof.

It amounts only to an accusation by Transport and General Workers' Union national secretary Jack Dromey that defence secretary Michael Portillo is out to wreck thousands of jobs in ROFs in Blackburn, Chorley and across the country by delaying the order and having a hidden agenda to buy cheap foreign supplies. That is denied by the Tories.

And the firm itself denies there is any immediate threat to jobs and says it is hopeful of winning the contract.

So, considering the timing, what does that leave?

A transparent piece of anti-Tory propaganda, that's what.

And a telling insight into the fact that, beneath the restraint that hitherto has been shown by the trade unions - or have had imposed on them - during this election campaign, there lurks the old-style bully boy tactics.

Rather than doing Labour a favour votes-wise, this naked and holed trade union scare story is more likely to make voters stop to think what may come if the unions are let off the leash to revert to their old ways under a Labour government.

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