In my garage, in a sealed crate, behind garden chairs, children’s bikes and a concrete mixer, I have a collection of Conservative Research Department pamphlets. These were produced throughout the 1980s and 1990s to provide propaganda points for Tory supporters on the issue of the day: why sanctions against South Africa will not work, why the community charge is a good idea, why we need to stop homosexuality being taught in our schools, that kind of thing. The pamphlets, replete with incriminating quotations from the Morning Star or Tribune, were produced by enthusiastic young Tory zealots such as Andrew Lansley, Oliver Letwin, George Osborne and David Cameron.

The pamphlet I have in mind right now, and would dig out if not for the concrete mixer, is from 1993. It is an excoriating attack on Labour leader John Smith for his closeness to the Transport and General Workers Union, and in particular its ‘leftwing firebrand’ leader Ron Todd. So in league with the T&G was Smith, that during his all-too-brief leadership he ended the union block vote and introduced one member one vote into Labour’s selection of candidates. All I can remember about Todd is that he was he supported CND, sounded like Alf Garnett, and wrote poetry.

Every Labour leader has been attacked by every Conservative one for being too close to the unions. We should be no more surprised that Cameron fired ‘Unite’ and ‘McCluskey’ at Ed Miliband at PMQs this week than if the sun comes up or the stars twinkle.

The big question is whether the Tories’ attacks will work on Miliband, in the way they did with Michael Foot, but did not with Tony Blair. There is a growing demonology around the trade union movement and its links to the Labour party. The facts are simple enough: the Labour party, like the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, has a federal structure, with individual members, as well as members of affiliated organisations, creating the overall party structure. The Tories’ federal structure comprises its local associations, Conservative Central Office, the parliamentary party, all overseen by the Conservative Board. There is no such single entity as ‘the Conservative party’. The Liberal Democrats are also a federation of local groups and ‘specified associated organisations’, overseen by the Federal Executive.

Labour’s federal structure reflects its own history, as an amalgamation of local socialist groups and smaller parties, the Fabian Society, and of course the trade unions. When the party was founded in 1900, most of the 129 delegates were from trade unions. These were individual trade unions, representing the full gamut of Victorian capitalism. The growth of the ‘new unions’ in the 1880s, alongside the established unions such as the miners’ federation, meant that most trades, crafts and industries were present at the Memorial Hall. In they trooped, these men with waistcoats and whiskers: miners, weavers, dockers, waiters, painters, chain-makers, sail-makers, gas-workers, railwaymen, iron-founders, cigar-makers, taxi-drivers and warehousemen. It was a genuine parliament of the proletariat.

But even then, they did not represent ‘the workers’, only those unionised, industrial workers, mostly in towns and cities. They did not represent the bulk of the non-unionised workforce: the thousands of agricultural workers in the semi-feudal countryside, the millions in domestic service, the slum-dwellers in the cities, child labour, the Irish immigrants, and the tens of thousands in casual, seasonal trades. Or the army, navy or police. And women, of course, who were not invited to the party.

Today, even their greatest fan, would have trouble arguing that the trade unions ‘represent’ Britain’s workers. There are six million trade union members in the UK. It might serve the left-wing fantasies of some to think of this as some vast proletarian army. But contained within this six million are professional footballers, Church of England clergy, airline pilots, actors, journalists, bankers, Whitehall mandarins, pensioners, at least one Conservative MP, and me. Most do not vote Labour. The latest labour market statistics suggest the UK workforce is around 30 million, so there are 24 million people who went off to work this morning, who are not in trade unions, and will not be when they come home tonight.

There is another important caveat: most unions in the TUC do not affiliate to the Labour party: the unions for teachers, journalists, health professionals and fire fighters, for example, do not. There are only 16 trade unions currently affiliated to the Labour party, ranging from the mighty Unite, GMB and UNISON, to the small-but-important bakers’ union and musicians’ union.

To say ‘the unions’ dominate the Labour party is not true. The issue is that a small number of super-unions, which have emerged in the past decade, dominate the affiliated section of the party. These super-unions came into being when the Labour party had its mind on other things, mostly governing the country after 1997. Little or no structural reform took place in the Labour party after 1 May 1997. For roughly 13 years, no member of the public, journalist, or leader of the Labour party, could care less about the composition of the National Executive Committee, or the relative voting strengths of Unite and the GMB, not when there is a war in Iraq and a cabinet at loggerheads over tuition fees or somesuch.

The Victorian Labour party structure, designed for a large number of small unions, is now creaking under the weight of a small number of large unions. This is why all the froth around Falkirk, Tom Watson, and Len McCluskey has a serious side. It is not, as most commentators are urging, a chance for Miliband to get all butch with the unions, to show them who is boss. That is so 90s. That is what Blair would have done. Clause IV, remember was a show-down with the union left, culminating with Arthur Scargill flouncing out of the Labour party, to the sound of champagne corks popping in the Leader’s Office. Job done.

No, the opportunity for Miliband is to achieve what Blair failed to do: to properly modernise the Labour party. Miliband can prove himself a moderniser where Blair failed. He can create a party of members and supporters, with groups representing every kind of interest and concern, vibrant local groups of campaigners, and open, transparent selection of candidates who reflect the diversity of the modern British economy. More Mums, fewer miners; more software designers, fewer stevedores. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, as they say in Falkirk.