With the ongoing squeeze on living standards and Keir Starmer’s determination to shift the Labour Party dramatically to the right, it is little wonder that trade unions are once again reassessing their links with the Party.
The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union disaffiliated not long after the Labour conference after its national president had his membership suspended on the most spurious grounds. The train-drivers’ union, ASLEF, will be considering at its forthcoming conference whether or not to remain affiliated. More significantly, Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, one of the ‘big four’ still affiliated, has questioned her union’s ongoing financial support to the Party and although it is not sourced, an article on the Squawkbox website suggests that another one of the big four, the GMB, is considering doing the same.
Sharon Graham spoke recently in support of striking refuse workers in Coventry, where a Labour council has hired scab labour to do their jobs at a rate higher than the pay being fought for by the Unite workers. Unite already pays the minimum affiliation fee to the Labour Party but now even that basic level of financial support will be reconsidered.
The blame for this state of affairs, and the near bankruptcy of the Labour Party rests with the current leadership of Keir Starmer and Labour’s General Secretary, David Evans. Not only is Starmer trying to turn Labour into a Tory-lite shadow of the Conservative Party, but Evans has used the party apparatus to drive a one-side factional civil war against the left.
By making up party rules as he goes along, Evans has used the regional apparatus of the Labour Party to side-line, suspend, expel, or otherwise restrict anyone on the left of the party who has sought nomination as a Labour candidate in the recent selections for the May local elections. Since Starmer became leader, tens of thousands of party members have become disillusioned and have left in disgust.
Labour right wing would gladly break the Party-trade union link
There is nothing remotely attractive to working class people in the Party that is being molded in the image of Starmer and Evans or in the policies it espouses. It is completely understandable, therefore, if affiliated unions are following the general membership and walking away.
When party members leave the party in disgust, it is a joy to Labour’s right wing. The likes of Lord Mandelson, a senior adviser to Starmer, were never reconciled to a mass membership of over 600,000, because it threatens their careers and the interests of capitalism. These people on the right of the party are in reality Tory infiltrators who are deeply embedded in the British establishment.
They were shocked to the very core when the membership twice elected Jeremy Corbyn, the most radical post-war leader, and it seemed that Labour would pursue genuine anti-capitalist policies. So they are determined that it will never happen again. The right wing would be happy with handfuls of members, perhaps enough to put out a few leaflets at election time, in the expectation that they could keep the party afloat on corporate donations.
What applies to the membership applies equally to affiliated unions. It has long been an ambition of the right wing to break the historic link between the Party and the four million trade union members affiliated to it. They have forgotten, if they ever knew in the first place, that it was above all the trade unions who were the mainstay of the formation of the Labour Representation Committee, which became the Labour Party, at the beginning of the last century.
Because of their role in the historic foundation of Labour and the continued importance of struggle in the political sphere for trade unions, we believe that socialists should support their continued affiliation. Those on the left fringe of the labour movement who are so keen to get the unions to disaffiliate, are singing from the hymn-sheet of the right wing, even if unwittingly.
We do not support for one moment the changes that have taken place in the Labour leadership in the last two years and we would understand the anger of trade union members. But there are alternatives to just walking away without a fight.
All of the big unions have huge resources in their political funds; they should deploy these funds to put up a fight inside the party. Just as there is no longer any justification for being a member of the Labour Party unless it is to fight the right wing, so also there is no justification for affiliating unless it is to use the maximum influence to build a party responsive to workers’ needs.
Every big union could employ political officers
Every large union has the capacity to organise schools and political education for its activists. Left unions could even collaborate on such schools. Political funds could pay for the employment of political officers, perhaps one in every region. They could train, deploy and advise thousands of the best activists to play a role in their local CLP and in regional Labour Parties, and all within the rules of the Party.
Any one big union could ‘out-gun’ the right-wing apparatus of the Labour Party and indeed, it is no more than right wing union bosses have been doing for decades, to get their favoured people selected as candidates. The question we should be putting to the leadership of unions like Unite is this – you have the means to campaign like this, but do you have the will? And isn’t that a far better option than throwing in the towel?
One of the reasons for the formation of the Labour Party in 1900 was the realisation, in those years around the turn of that century, that industrial struggle alone was never going to be enough. Court judgements like the Taff Vale decision, effectively opening unions up to massive costs, struck fear in the minds of the trade unions.
Even today, ASLEF describes itself as a ‘political’ union and Unite is conducting a political campaign against the privatisation of the NHS. Aimed specifically at Tory MPs in red-wall seats, Unite is using billboards, ad vans and bus stops signs to carry messages to voters about waiting times and unmet health needs.
It is not enough to conduct such a political campaign but not to take it to its logical conclusion and seek to have MPs and a government that will carry out policies on the NHS in the interests of workers. The problem is that the current Labour leadership cannot be relied upon to do that. Unite, ASLEF and the other left unions, therefore, need to throw their weight into the fight for a Labour Party leadership that will.
Labour’s march to the right would not have happened, but for the acquiescence of the right wing union leaders. That is no better typified by the leadership of the GMB, which at Labour conference promoted its campaign for a £15/hour national minimum wage, while at the same time actively supporting a leader who they knew to be against it.
In the discussions prior to the formation of the Labour Party, it was Keir Hardie who formulated a motion that was agreed among the trade unions, for parliamentary representation “promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour”. (See Henry Pelling’s book, The Origins of the Labour Party)
That would not be a bad start for today’s union leaders. With workers facing the biggest squeeze in living standards in six decades (Resolution Foundation), when every trade union leader can feel the ground shifting below their feet, it is time for the unions to use their influence to change Labour for the better. That means fighting for MPs, a programme and a leader in the interests of working class families.
I disagree. During the period 2015-19 an argument could be made on behalf of Labour as a potential vehicle for socialist change. But even when the Labour Party had policies, a membership majority and (for once) an elected leader who were on the left, real power still lay with the Party machine, the councillors and the MP’s. They used it to undermine and destroy that situation. They have made it clear they will never allow it to happen again.
Of course trade unions theoretically have some power within Labour, if they were able to make a reality of that. But experience shows that’s not feasible in reality. From 1997-2010 the unions were unable to get the Labour government to lift a single significant element of the anti-union laws which diminished the ability to protect their members in the workplace.
It will be terribly hard to build something outside and to the left of Labour, but a start has to be made, and the unions have the strength to make it work. I live in Coventry where the Labour council is currently employing strike-breakers and delivering lying propaganda to every house, in an effort to defeat industrial action by Unite members. Why the hell should Unite be giving their members’ money to support a Party who does that?