Tube staff and lecturers are showing how to stage a strike in the 21st-century | Zoe Williams

Just because we live in a post-industrial era doesn't mean industrial action has suddenly become obsolete

This week the tube workers went on strike, and the Telegraph called them the enemy underground" and complained that Putin apologists" had brought London to a standstill". It was the silliness, more than the vulgar opportunism, that caught the eye.

The tube was actually down because of a row over pensions and staffing levels. Two weeks ago, university lecturers were striking on the same principle, though more recently their actions have also been centred on the whole spectrum of declining pay and conditions - a pension raid is often just the most visible edge of a wider erosion of rights. Building a casuistic case linking union action to a brutal kleptocrat's war, via a Morning Star subscription, is essentially an attempt to delegitimise unions altogether - and not even a serious attempt: more of a festive sidebar to the more sober main narrative.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist