The Tory council assault on unions | Peter Lazenby

Local authorities spend billions on services such as refuse collection. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

The government has opened a new front in its war on Britain's trade unions. It is attempting to wreck trade union organisation among hundreds of thousands of local authority workers by saddling unions with millions of pounds in costs.

The first evidence I saw of this came in Leeds, ironically in the week that Britain's labour movement marked the anniversary of the imprisonment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the six Dorset agricultural labourers who were transported to Australia in 1834 for swearing allegiance to a union.

Here's what is happening. Councils give union representatives – elected convenors or shop stewards – time to do their union work. It's called "time off for union duties". The work is the nuts and bolts of trades union activity, such as representing people at disciplinary and grievance hearings. Some of it fulfils people's statutory right to be represented.

Some convenors with thousands of members work full time on union duties, although they are employees of the councils, who pay their wages. For example in my city, Leeds, the secretary of the council branch of the public service union Unison, which has 8,000 members, is a social worker, but spends all his time on union duties.

It is in councils' interests to have such a system. It helps maintain smooth industrial relations. It avoids the disruption of pulling people off their jobs daily to represent colleagues. It provides a mechanism to solve potential disputes before they happen.

In Leeds, Conservative councillors are attempting to sabotage the arrangement by calling on the Labour-controlled council to stop paying the union convenors' wages, and make the unions find the money. There are 15 convenors. The Tories say stopping their pay would save Leeds council around ?400,000, at a time when the council has to find ?90m in cuts (cuts imposed by the Tories and their Lib-Dem supporters in government).

The proposal is accompanied by mealy-mouthed lip service to the "valuable role" played by trades unions, and reaffirming "reasonable support" for trades unions, including time off for union duties. But if implemented it would cripple the Leeds council unions' abilities to provide representation for their members.

At first I thought the plan might be a one-off from some ambitious, union-loathing Tory wanting to make a name for himself, and make life difficult for the unions. It isn't. It's happening across the country, with other Tory councillors making similar proposals or preparing the ground for them. The Tories are even targeting union organisation in police authorities. If successful, it would financially cripple public sector unions.

Local authorities spend billions of pounds a year in taxpayers' money to provide refuse collection, street cleaning, housing, old people's homes, state education and other services. Some Tories want the billions it costs to run these services handed to the profit-hungry private sector. Union organisation is the biggest single obstacle to this aim, so it has to be removed.

If the Tory strategy succeeds, remaining services in the public sector will be privatised and their provision will be motivated by profit, not people's needs. Dividends and bonuses will be the key factors in running our schools and old people's homes.

Margaret Thatcher recognised that organised labour was the biggest stumbling block confronting privatisation. Now David Cameron and his allies plan to finish the job of destroying union organisation.

In 1834 the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported to Australia for organising collectively. Transportation may be a thing of the past. The Tories' determination to remove obstacles to private sector profit is not.

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Peter Lovatt: 'Dancing can change the way you think'

Dr Peter Lovatt is head of the University of Hertfordshire's Dance Psychology Lab.

Dr Peter Lovatt has been head of the Dance Psychology Lab at the University of Hertfordshire since founding it in 2008. Prior to this he trained in ballet, tap and jazz, and worked as a professional dancer. Last summer he wrote, produced and performed in Dance, Doctor, Dance! The Psychology of Dance Show as part of the Edinburgh festival fringe. In March he gave a talk at TEDx Observer.

How can dance change the way people think?

We've had people in the lab dancing and then doing problem-solving – and different sorts of dancing help them with different sorts of problem- solving. We know that when people engage in improvised kinds of dance it helps them with divergent thinking – where there's multiple answers to a problem. Whereas when they engage in very structured dance it helps their convergent thinking – trying to find the single answer to a problem.

You've been studying the effects of dance on people with Parkinson's disease…

Yes, we know as Parkinson's disease develops it can lead to a disruption of the divergent thinking processes. So we thought if we used improvised dance with a PD group we might see an improvement in their divergent thinking skills, and that was exactly what we did see.

Next we would like to study what it is about dancing as an intervention that has as impact on neural processing. One possibility is that when they dance they are developing new neural pathways to get around dopamine-depleted blockages.

Watch Peter Lovatt's talk at the Observer's TEDx event earlier this year.

How else can dance change how we think?

There have been several papers looking at the self-esteem of ballet dancers in training – and what they've found is that girls in their mid-teens have significantly lower self-esteem than non-ballet-dancing girls. There are two explanations for this. One would be that girls with low self-esteem choose classical ballet because the struggle for perfection reinforces their poor self-image. Another theory says that ballet training subculture can be very detrimental to a young girl's self-esteem because they are constantly being told they are not doing it right and that the body shape issue is very important in classical ballet.

Which explanation do you think is correct?

We are trying to test these two hypotheses in the lab by comparing data from 600 dancers in different dance groups. So we're looking at things like comparing classical ballet dancers with Indian classical dancers – the latter don't have to wear tight-fitting clothing in training. We're also comparing them with burlesque dancers who are very happy to show a fuller body. If it's the case that girls with low self-esteem choose ballet there's not a great deal we can do about that. But if the classical ballet subculture might lead to eating disorders and self-harm then that's something very important we should be flagging up.

Is there a dance style that is good for self-esteem?

Anything where there's a high degree of tolerance for not getting it right. Things such as ceilidh dancing people smile, laugh and giggle, and they are adults and it's absolutely fine. It's wonderful. There have also been studies that have found that dancing in baggy "jazz" clothing is better than tight-fitting clothing for the dancer's self-esteem.

Is it correct that women think men whose ears are the same size are better dancers?

It sounds like nonsense but a study by Brown et al found that physically symmetrical men were rated better dancers by women. A second study by Fink et al focused on men's fingers. They measured the 2D-4D ratio – the relative length of the second and fourth digit, an indicator to exposure to prenatal testosterone. He found that those men with a high degree of prenatal testosterone exposure were again rated as more attractive and masculine dancers.

You've built on this research?

I went to a nightclub where we offered people free entry if they took part in the study. Wemeasured fingers, their ears, their fertility, where the women were in their menstrual cycle, their relationship status, whether they were looking for a mate. And our findings were very similar. Those men with high 2D-4D ratio were rated as more attractive dancers. We also found something unique: the women signalled their degree of fertility through their body movement by isolating and moving their hips, which made men find them more attractive.

So is their a causal link between factors such as symmetry or hip-movement and being an attractive dancer?

Some people, such as Brown and Fink, argue that your hormonal and genetic make-up is being signalled by the way you dance. They posit a direct link. But it might not be that at all: imagine you are a really beautiful person so whenever you go out to a club, everyone looks at you and that fills with you with confidence – that might be what makes you dance in an attractive way that people find even more attractive. There might be a link, it could be an association though behaviours that makes you more confident.

So female performers in pop videos dance as if they were at the most fertile point of their cycle?

Yes, they do. There are often lots of images of women's hips moving in isolation. Often it's not the most attractive form of dancing – it's an artificial enhancement. What's interesting is that people who look at these women and tell us why they find them attractive never say: "I just spent the last three minutes looking at her hip region", which is what our data suggest they are doing. Rather, they find all kinds of other reasons to justify what they think.

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