Small and medium-sized business bosses have been warned that Union delegates have backed joint industrial action if "attacks" on jobs, pensions and public services go ahead.

The TUC backed a motion to build an alliance between unions and communities to work together to maximise the effects of any strike action.

The coalition government is pressing ahead with widespread cuts as it attempts to reduce the country's record peacetime budget deficit. A comprehensive spending review which will include details of the cuts will be presented on the 20th of October.

"These are not temporary cuts, but a permanent rollback of public services and the welfare state. Not so much an economic necessity as a political project driven by an ideological clamour for a minimal state," said TUC general secretary Mr Barber.

"What they take apart now could take generations to rebuild. Decent public services are the glue that holds a civilised society together and we diminish them at our peril. Cut services, put jobs in peril and increase inequality, that's the way to make Britain a darker, brutish, more frightening place."