By Steve McKenzie – a Unite Community member.
Marxists represent the interests of the working class, those who have nothing to exchange but their labour. Our task is to explain things as they are, and not as we might like them to be, and to try and chart the best way forward. This document is an attempt to look at the British Labour movement as it exists today, and particularly the trade unions.
The working class
In Britain, work is no longer in heavy industry, the mines, the docks, big factories or shipyards, although there are still a handful of workers left in the remnants of these industries and workplaces. Today’s working class is mainly made up of security guards, shop workers, hospitality workers, transport and building workers, doctors, nurses and other care workers, civil servants, teachers, and those suffering super exploitation in places like Amazon warehouses, call centres and the gig economy.
Another major change that has taken place that we need to consider, is the fact that Britain is no longer a world super power, despite the illusions of the right wing – those who are always looking backwards and hankering for the days of empire or reliving the battles of the first and second world wars. Today’s reality is that Britain is no longer even the number one sidekick to US imperialism: just another poodle doing as it is told.
Despite these changes, and like the ruling class anywhere in the world, the British ruling elite and their establishment still need to ensure that the working class are atomised, demoralised, downtrodden and kept in ignorance.
Their relentless campaign to achieve this end is pursued through an institutionally corrupt political and legal system and critically supplemented by an institutionally dishonest and duplicitous mainstream media. The media’s dumbing down of the population is achieved through a daily drip-feed of misinformation and trivialisation on the television, in newspapers and social media.
On top of this, there is the never-ending driving down of wages and conditions leading to the further impoverishment of the working class. For many, this means having to work a ridiculous number of hours, often in more than one job, just to make ends meet.
Rebuilding our unions will be difficult but it is the first step in building an effective fightback. However, doing this is no easy task, it will require hard work, commitment, the development of a collective consciousness and leading by example at a rank-and-file level in the unions. Success is dependent on the active involvement and organisation of the advanced trade unionists, but there are difficult hurdles to overcome.
Many workers often do not have time to think, let alone to devote time to building the union and developing a collective consciousness. Some, like NHS staff are working so hard that even maintaining consciousness itself is sometimes a struggle!
It is against the backdrop of this reality that we have to make a start if we are to understand what is really going on and why. Understanding is an essential pre-requisite to building anything else.
The Labour party
It is essential to carefully examine the current situation in the workers’ political organisation, the Labour Party.
Of course, trade unions are the most basic working-class organisations. They are the first step in any fightback. They are set up to improve wages and conditions in the workplace in the first instance.
But in the beginning of the 20th century, it became clear to an increasing number of genuine union leaders that militancy and collective action in the workplace, in and of themselves, were not enough. There was, is, and has always been, a need for political representation.
At the turn of the twentieth century anti-union legislation that shackled the unions’ ability to fight for their members brought this issue to a head. It necessitated a political response. This repressive political move by the ruling elite was seen by the union leaders at the time as the final straw and it is why the unions were so instrumental and central in setting up the Labour party.
Fast forward nearly half a century later. After two abortive Labour governments between the world wars in the twentieth century, the 1945 Labour government came to power and introduced the NHS and the welfare state. These were significant social reforms for the working class.
Incredibly, that Labour government was then voted out of office, and this was followed by 13 years of Tory government.
The Labour governments of the sixties and seventies introduced reforms like the equal rights acts and progressive trade union legislation, but nothing like the reforms of the 1945 Labour government. Given that the Labour government of the seventies began to make public sector cuts, kept down wages and provoked the “winter of discontent”, it was perhaps not surprising that they were voted out of office in the election of May 1979.
After 18 years of Tory government and unprecedented cuts and privatisation of our public services Labour was once again returned to office in 1997 under Tony Blair. But the Labour party had undergone a fundamental change. It now accepted neo-liberal economic policies like privatisation.
After 13 years and three “New” Labour governments, which produced few reforms to turn back the attacks of the Tory governments and to meaningfully benefit the working class, Labour was once again voted out of office in 2010.
Worst Labour Government
Today, 120 years since the formation of the Labour Party, and several failed reformist Labour governments later, we have arguably the worst Labour government there has ever been under Sir Keir Starmer.
It is fairly clear that the current Labour Party is implementing hardly any major reforms that benefit working people. It is virtually ignoring the crisis in the NHS. It is, without doubt, primarily serving the needs of big business and the leadership is clearly no longer interested in representing the needs of the working class.
Even the proposed new Employment Rights Bill which has been promised to the trade unions looks threatened with being watered down as it progresses through Parliament.
The political wing of the labour movement, the Labour Party, and therefore the current Labour government, are almost completely in the pocket of big business and the establishment. The Labour Party’s unprincipled, bought-and-paid for leaders acquiesce, bend the knee and conform to any pressure that big business and the establishment put on them.
As a result, the membership of the party continues to collapse, with people leaving in droves. Activity at a rank-and-file level is all but dead. Although Labour won a landslide at the election, it was on just 34% of the vote on a much-reduced turnout and with fewer votes than Corbyn got in either of his two elections. In truth it was the Tories who lost it.
And then there is the threat of the rise of Reform, who got four million votes. Had the right wing vote not been split, things would have turned out very differently.
The disastrous and treacherous policy and approach of the Starmer government – the two-child benefit cap, cut in winter fuel allowance, nothing effective to start rebuilding the NHS – has led to a situation where Labour and Reform are now neck and neck in the polls. Labour is even shown in second place in many of them. Any sensible deal that Reform and the Tories might end up doing will guarantee a far-right win at the next election.
Labour leaders who have no programme to challenge and end the power of the bosses will inevitably be controlled by them and carry out their wishes by attacking the living standards of the working-class. Governments that promised to introduce reforms will be forced to water them down or abandon them completely. Such a betrayal is said to be inherent in such reformist governments. How much truer is it for governments that come to power promising very little to begin with?
Worst Labour government?
Added to that, the bureaucratic centralisation of the Labour Party, the cowardice and corruption, means that Starmer/Reeves/Streeting and the rest are appeasing big business and are therefore inevitably playing into the hands of Farage.
As a result of this workers will feel that they have no political voice. In desperation they will turn to Reform. It is even possible that Reform will replace the Tories and win the next election outright.
The unions
The Labour Party increasingly looks and feels to some like a lost cause – that the Labour government faces defeat unless there is a dramatic turnaround – a change of course. And if the party does lose the next election, it would take the transformation of the party with policies and a programme in the interests of working people, to ever have a chance of winning again.
In the absence of any serious opposition coming from within the Labour party it is fairly clear that if there is going to be a fightback, it will come via the unions. The reality is, though, that most of our unions are not in great shape. They are bureaucratised, centralised and many are ineffective and anything but membership led.
There are glimmers of hope that this could change, and that resistance will develop. At a recent Labour NEC meeting, for example, it is reported that the unions caucused together beforehand and then told the leadership that the Employment Rights Bill must not be watered down and needs to be legislated quickly. Unite initiated but GMB and USDAW had the most to say in the actual meeting.
This is perhaps a small sign of bigger things to come as union leaders come under mounting pressure from active members. However, such a fightback is not an inevitability, because we have to question whether many unions are even functioning properly at a rank-and-file level. What will be required is the activity of organised lefts in the unions, discussing with their fellow members, planning for union conferences and election: in short, organising at all levels to challenge for leading positions and left policies in the unions.
The truth about the parlous state of many of our unions needs to be told, and even more importantly understood. The major problems that exist in the industrial wing of our movement will not be solved by ignoring them or pretending that they are not there.
Unfortunately, like the Labour party, many of our unions have been taken over by unaccountable, self-seeking and self-serving bureaucracies, who are equally in the pockets of the employers and the establishment. The members of these unions clearly have a job of work to do in democratising them and taking back control.
Membership involvement in most unions, at a workplace and branch level, has been deliberately stifled by the bureaucracy over the years. As a result, many unions are weak and completely controlled by unelected officials. Despite claims made by some of these, most of our unions are anything but democratic, and are most certainly not membership led.
Unions affiliated to the Labour Party are among the worst offenders. On the right, there are the GMB, USDAW, Community and Unison, all tightly controlled by the well-heeled union bureaucrats – so called professionals – who are often more likely to do a deal with the employers than they are to represent their members properly.
Having said this, in Unison, there is a strong challenge from the left coming in the NEC and General Secretary elections. It is also the case that there are still some active branches in Unison where members are represented properly on day-to-day employment problems.
In Unite, at least on the industrial front, as far as collective action in the workplace is concerned, in a good number of disputes the members are well led and properly represented.
However, it also has to be pointed out that in all of these unions, the overwhelming majority of members facing individual difficulties at work are very poorly represented, if at all, though there are some notable exceptions.
More effective unions
Among the unions not affiliated to the Labour Party, the NEU is one of those that stands out as a serious campaigning left wing union.
[photo – Schools Week]
Their members have been involved in local and national disputes in recent years. While, no doubt, this union has its faults, it is far more effective than those on the right of our movement. The relatively high membership involvement and grass-roots organisation in workplaces is a very significant factor in this.
The same could be said about the doctors and nurses’ unions, the BMA and the RCN. Neither are affiliated to the Labour Party or even the TUC. However, membership involvement, and rank-and-file organisation, has played a major role in radicalising these unions in recent years. Both unions have been involved in serious national disputes in the recent past and are taken far more seriously these days. They have put to shame the TUC affiliated unions in the health service – Unison, the GMB and Unite.
The key point is that where the membership is involved, and is relatively well organised, a trade union starts behaving like one and representing the interests of its members.
Where the members are not involved, and not organised, it is those employed in the union structures, who are in control. The control by right-wing officials (and the unelected bureaucrats in some of the so-called left unions) has trampled on and manipulated the unions democratic structures. There is a job of work to be done in democratising our unions.
Broadly speaking the NEU, BMA and RCN show us that it can be done. They have proved how unions operate far more effectively when their members are involved and organised.
If the members at a rank-and-file level in the right-wing unions, (or at least the more active layers), were to get organised, like they are trying to in Unison, and should do in Unite, the whole situation could start to be turned around.
This is easier said than done, given the incredible pressures of daily life for many working people. On the other hand, fewer people are under greater pressure than doctors and nurses, and they have proved that it can be done.
The alternative is too horrific and doesn’t bear thinking about. If our unions remain inactive, subservient and under right-wing control, if they continue to do the employers’ bidding, they will wither on the vine. Right-wing unions, and some which claim to be on the left, that fail to represent their members properly at an individual and collective level in the workplace and on industrial issues do not have a divine right to exist.
Attacks on working people must be fought
- Union leaders have failed to organise even token resistance as our NHS has been, and continues to be, systematically dismantled, privatised and destroyed.
- Local authority services have been decimated with little more than a whimper from the trade unions.
- The water industry has been privatised, our bills are astronomical, and our rivers and coastal waters are having raw sewage poured into them.
- Energy bills are going through the roof.
- There is a housing crisis with young people being ripped off by slum landlords. Home ownership is unaffordable for most couples nowadays.
- There has been a significant transfer of wealth over the last two generations as our unions have got weaker and weaker.
- In short, the super-rich get richer and the rest of us are constantly being driven into the dirt.
The political wing of the Labour movement has been usurped by the clique that has solidified around Starmer. Even the mild reformist policies of Jeremy Corbyn were too much for the British establishment to tolerate.
It was the movement behind Corbyn that they really feared, therefore the representatives of the bosses in the Labour party, were going to have to re-assert control if the Labour party were going to be allowed to hold office again. With the help of the establishment this is precisely what they did.
SOCIALISM
- Genuine socialism would ensure that the profit ethos and the parasitic private health providers were driven out of the health service. The billions that are bled from the NHS would be spent on more doctors, nurses and hospitals.
- The profit ethos and private companies would also be driven out of our councils. Local authorities would once again be properly funded so as decent public services, publicly provided, could once again flourish.
- The water industry would be renationalised.
- There would be a massive council house building programme.
In short, there would be a transfer of wealth from the rich to the working class, i.e. back to those who create the wealth in the first place.
Ultimately the socialist transformation of society is the only answer but just calling for it changes nothing – rebuilding our movement is an essential prerequisite.
A vital first step in this process has to be to reclaim and rebuild our unions to ensure that they start performing like unions, representing the interests of the members and not the unions employees that the members subscriptions pay for.
Coming to terms with the realities that have been outlined gives us a starting point.
