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New Labour, the unions & the political funds debate
In the trade union conference season now under way, the
unions’ links with the Labour Party have become a key issue. The Socialist
Alliance has contributed to this debate with a recently published pamphlet,
Whose Money is it Anyway? CLIVE HEEMSKERK, a former member of the Socialist
Alliance national executive, reviews its arguments.
EARLY THIS MARCH Tony Blair launched a 300-page pamphlet
designed to win support amongst public sector workers for his ‘reform
programme’ for public services, including a growing involvement of the private
sector. This ambitious aim was somewhat undermined, however, when on the same
day the results leaked out of a government commissioned report on how private
contractors achieve their ‘efficiency savings’.
Not surprisingly the report confirmed that the ‘entrepreneurial
skills’ brought in by private companies come in the form of cuts in staffing,
lower pay and reduced terms and conditions for transferred workers. John
Edmonds, leader of the GMB general workers union, denounced Blair for
"bowing down to big business" in his determination to hand over public
services to private vultures (Guardian, 8 March).
The Socialist Alliance pamphlet, Whose Money is it
Anyway?, authored by a regional official of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU),
Matt Wrack, in its early chapters offers further illustrations of New Labour’s
service to big business interests. "The party which has traditionally
received the bulk of its support from working-class people", it concludes,
"the party created and funded by the trade unions, has become the main
vehicle for further attacks on working people and particularly on public
services". (p3) The working class is effectively disenfranchised.
But this wasn’t always the case. One chapter gives a quick
sketch of how the Labour Party was born, in 1900, as the product of growing
sections of workers looking to politically express their collective interests
against the capitalist class and their political representatives, the Liberal
and Conservative parties. Prior to this there had been some union officials
elected as Liberal candidates, a ‘Lib-Labism’ underpinned by the thinking
"that Labour could achieve representation as part of the Liberal
Party". (p4) "These ideas", however, "increasingly came into
conflict with the experience of growing numbers of workers" of the
capitalist character of the Liberal Party, culminating in the moves to establish
the Labour Representation Committee, renamed as the Labour Party in 1906.
The pamphlet correctly records that the formation of the
Labour Party was an important step forward. Although the arguments are not
clearly stated in Whose Money? an independent party bringing workers
together to struggle and discuss collectively impels different sections to move
beyond their own particular interests to develop a broader class consciousness.
This is necessary both for the task of ending capitalism and the building of a
new, socialist society. The Labour Party was a ‘capitalist-workers
party’, with a leadership at the top which reflected the outlook of the
capitalist class but with a working class base. With such a base of support, and
a structure through which the unions could move to challenge the leadership and
threaten the capitalists’ interests, it was always a potentially unreliable
tool for the ruling class. That is why Labour governments in the past, in 1924
and 1929-31 as well as the last Labour government of 1974-79, while reluctantly
tolerated as a means of holding the working class in check, were simultaneously
undermined and eventually brought down by the capitalists when they could no
longer accomplish that task.
The attitude of the majority of the ruling class to Blair’s
New Labour government, however, is entirely different, reflecting the fact that
the Labour Party has now been transformed into another capitalist party. It is
on this fundamental question, however, the character of the Labour Party today,
that the Socialist Alliance pamphlet falls down.
Tactics and strategy
WHOSE MONEY? ARGUES that "the working class today
still needs an independent political voice. The question is how the political
funds can be used to build one". (p6) Yet this evades the central question
being raised in the union debates: is the Labour Party still capable of being
‘reclaimed’ as that voice?
Describing the ‘Blair Project’ as an ‘attempt’ to
"reverse the decision of 1900, that working people needed a separate
political organisation to represent their interests", it refers to the ‘aim’
of the Blairites as being "the creation of a US-style political system
where both main parties are clearly identified with big business and the unions
are merely seen as one ‘interest group’ among many". (p7) "The
Blair Revolution", the pamphlet continues, is the ‘process’ not of
"modernising the Labour Party but of taking it back a hundred years".
But nowhere is a clear conclusion drawn: has the ‘attempt’ been successful,
the ‘process’ completed?
If so, then all the tactical questions relating to the
political funds debate should revolve around the task of drawing the trade
unions from the New Labour prison to play their part in the re-establishment of
working class political representation, the formation of a new workers’ party.
If the Socialist Alliance believes, however, that the Labour Party can be
reclaimed as a vehicle to fight for workers’ interests, then that also needs
to be openly stated when tactical issues are discussed. Clearly, while no social
formation is fixed for all time, or totally discards all its old characteristics
while its new features develop, a categorisation has to be made.
This becomes clear when Whose Money? takes up the
response of the union leaders to Blairism. Trade union officials "have
criticised Blair for his attack on public sector workers as ‘wreckers’,"
the pamphlet says, "but they continue to tell us that there is no
alternative and that therefore Labour is the only party the unions can
endorse... If they were serious, this argument would mean that they have a
responsibility to wage a serious fight within the Labour Party for policies that
the unions support. Unfortunately, the union representatives on Labour’s
National Executive have been some of the most loyal Blairites going. What is the
point of electing trade union delegates onto Labour’s executive if they
subsequently ignore the policies of their own union at every opportunity?"
(pp10-11)
But isn’t this the wrong question? Shouldn’t the union
leaders be compelled to explain what the point is of sending delegates to Labour
Party conferences etc, if the changed structures of the Labour Party have
removed all realistic possibilities of the unions determining the direction of
the party? The unions have just 30 votes out of 144 at Labour’s National
Policy Forums, for example, the ‘filter’ through which all policy decisions
pass before they are ‘debated’ at the annual conference. At the conference
the unions share just 50% of the total votes with other affiliated organisations
(such as the Co-operative Party), down from 90% in the past.
In fact to speak in this context of ‘the unions’ as a
block who are ‘not fighting’ inside the Labour Party, provides an excuse to
not take independent political action for precisely those union leaders who
criticise Tony Blair but at the same time defend the Labour link. At February’s
Scottish Labour Party conference the votes of Labour’s biggest union
affiliate, Amicus (the new union resulting from the merger of the engineering
union, the AEEU, and the MSF manufacturing, science and finance union), were,
alongside local party delegates, sufficient to outvote all the public sector
unions on a policy document endorsing private involvement in public services.
The train drivers’ union, ASLEF, ‘fought’ to table an anti-war resolution
at Labour’s 2001 October conference but it never reached the conference floor.
The rail and maritime workers union, the RMT, has not had enough votes to get
even a debate on tube privatisation. Are the leaders of the smaller, often more
left-wing, unions – and the Socialist Alliance – really saying that it is
necessary to wait until Amicus and other right-wing unions are ‘reclaimed’
as organisations fighting for workers’ interests, before fire-fighters, rail
workers, postal workers etc, can address the issue of their political
representation? And what of the non-Labour Party affiliated unions, such as the
National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the PCS civil service union?
What is more important, however, even than the structural
changes that have blocked off the old democratic channels that existed in the
Labour Party, is the changed perception of ‘New Labour’ amongst ordinary
trade union members and wider layers of society. The pamphlet concedes that if a
serious attempt were made to ‘change the direction’ of the Labour Party by
the unions, it would mean "organising a huge campaign" (p16). "A
massive industrial and political campaign waged by the unions and involving tens
of thousands of members" and service users, for example, would be necessary
to put a stop to Labour’s privatisation plans. (p16) But what would the ‘political’
side of this campaign be? Are there really ‘tens of thousands’ of union
members and others prepared to join the Labour Party in order to ‘reclaim’
it, if only an appeal were made to them to do so by the John Edmonds, Dave
Prentis (the UNISON public sector workers’ union general secretary), Andy
Gilchrist (the FBU general secretary) etc?
The Newcastle city branch of UNISON recently surveyed 3,000
of its 7,000 members and discovered that only 30 were members of the Labour
Party. Although more paid the political levy to UNISON’s Affiliated Political
Fund, which finances the Labour Party, levy-payers can not participate in the
Labour Party unless they join as individuals. The RMT is consequently having
great difficulties finding "members who are eligible to be delegated to
attend Labour Party events" according to its London Labour Party regional
committee representative, Diana Udall (Labour Left Briefing, March 2002). And
"those who do attend", she conceded, "wonder why they were there
as they are allowed very little input by the party machine".
The emptying out of activists in the Labour Party is
strikingly revealed in the declining votes for the ‘ordinary members’
representatives on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), including the
anti-leadership Grassroots Alliance candidates. As recently as 1999 Mark Seddon,
the editor of the left newspaper, Tribune, polled 52,699 votes in the NEC
elections. By 2001 this had fallen to 22,559, a loss of 30,000 left-Labour
voting members in two years. Yet Whose Money? speaks of the "many
people who are currently Labour Party members but who are angry at the policies
of the government" who absolutely ‘must’ be involved if "a serious
challenge to Blairism" is to be mounted. (p16) This is to look to the
residues of the past rather than the profound shift in consciousness that is
beginning to develop.
The broad disenchantment that exists with New Labour was
revealed in last year’s general election, most significantly in the
unprecedented mass abstention, particularly in the working-class Labour ‘heartlands’
and amongst young voters. The recently published British Social Attitudes survey
showed that only 16% of voters in June 2001 thought that there were significant
differences between Labour and the Tories, the first time since such surveys
have been conducted that less than one third thought this way. (The Economist,
16 February). Yet abstention did not mean a refusal to engage in political
activity: 24% of those aged 18-24 who said that they did not vote in 2001, had
previously taken part in a protest march or had written to their MP. (The
Guardian, 4 July 2001) How could they be convinced of the need to ‘reclaim the
Labour Party’?
The unavoidable question: what alternative?
THE SOCIALIST PARTY believes that Blair has succeeded in
transforming New Labour into a capitalist party. A new mass workers’ party is
necessary, uniting together trade unionists, unorganised workers, socialists,
young people, oppressed groups, environmental and community campaigners, as the
only way to ensure that ‘the working class today can achieve an independent
political voice’. The role the unions and their political funds should be
playing to build one is the real question to be addressed.
In this context many of the proposals in the Socialist
Alliance pamphlet should be supported. The sub-title of Whose Money?, ‘the
case for democratising the unions political funds’, however, is misleading.
With some exceptions – in UNISON, for example, the Affiliated Political Fund
is not subject to democratic control by the union’s annual conference –
rank-and-file union members have no more or less say over political funds than
they have over the union structures generally. It is an unnecessary exaggeration
to assert that in every union the rank-and-file "have no real say about how
the political funds are used... ordinary members don’t even have the right to
hold such debates" (p17). Delegates to the 2000 Communications Workers’
Union (CWU) conference, for example, voted against the leadership to stop a
£200,000 rise in the political levy to fund Labour’s general election
campaign and censured the national treasurer for attempting to prevent branch
backing for Ken Livingstone’s London mayoral campaign. Nevertheless, all
practical steps to ‘free up’ the funds should be vigorously pursued.
Context, however, determines much. The idea that
"unions should draw up a set of criteria, based on the policies of each
union, to decide who to support" (p11) has recently been adopted by the RMT
– following Bob Crow’s election as union general secretary – which will
now only fund 14 MPs who support the union’s anti-privatisation policy. The
pro-Labour link FBU general secretary Andy Gilchrist has also backed such moves
but precisely because they do not necessarily "loosen the union-party
link" (Guardian, 22 February). They can also, in fact, lend support to the
idea that the attacks of capitalism on jobs, living conditions, the environment
etc can be meet by one or two policy changes or reforms rather than an
alternative programme for government. On their own, without explaining what the
Labour Party has become or raising the need for a new workers’ party, such ‘democratisation’
proposals are insufficient.
It also means that Whose Money? is completely
unconvincing in its later pages when it tries to answer various imagined ‘questions
from a union member’. The idea that unions "could distribute the
political fund proportionally according to a vote of the membership or a vote at
the union’s conference... [or] delegate control of the fund (or a proportion
of it) to the local organisations of the union" (p18), should be supported
as a step to loosen Labour’s hold over the unions’ funds. But it does raise
the question, "wouldn’t your proposals allow the Tories and Liberals to
get some of our money?" (p17). Ironically, the pro-Labour link right-wing
Amicus leader, Sir Ken Jackson, a flag-carrier for Blair’s public/private ‘reforms’,
has criticised the TUC for "wasting my members money" by talking to
Tory frontbench spokespersons "with a privatisation addiction" and for
looking for closer links with the Liberal Democrats (Guardian, 13 March). To
baldly reply as Whose Money? does, "No!... the political funds were
set up in an attempt to create an independent working-class political voice.
That should remain the case. Clearly the Tories and Liberals are big business
parties..." (pp17-18) is an assertion not an argument. What is New Labour
then, with its ‘addiction’ to the market? Making a characterisation of the
Labour Party, and explaining the need for the unions to build their own
political alternative, cannot be avoided.
Last year’s FBU and UNISON conferences passed resolutions
calling for, respectively, a rule change and a review of the unions’ political
funds. The FBU executive and UNISON’s Political Fund Review Task Group have
both responded by arguing that freeing up a union’s political funds would open
up the prospect of Labour disaffiliating the union. "Why should we be held
to ransom?" answers Whose Money? If Labour threatened such a move
"we should respond with a united campaign to... defend our right to spend
our money as we decide" (p16), to support non-Labour candidates while still
funding the Labour Party. Normally prisoners pay a ransom in order to be freed.
This time the Socialist Alliance wants ‘the right’ to carry on paying money
to the unions’ captors!
It is valid to discuss tactically how to raise the issues
around the political funds in each union. But why is the Socialist Alliance
afraid of the prospect of New Labour initiating the break-up of the union link?
An earlier report by Matt Wrack to the Socialist Alliance executive, The FBU
decision on the political fund (12th June 2001), gives the reason.
Disaffiliation, he argues, immediately raises the question, "What will
replace Labour? At this stage the Socialist Alliance, unproved as it is, will
not be seen generally as an alternative. Rather, it is a question of building
that support by our work". The implication is that the development of a
workers’ ‘independent political voice’ must wait until the Socialist
Alliance is ready to provide it.
Although Matt Wrack is a member of the Socialist Party his
is not the position that was democratically agreed by a unanimous decision at
the Socialist Party’s annual conference. Rather it echoes the haughty approach
of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), who organised a takeover of the Socialist
Alliance at its December 2001 conference. They see the unions’ role as one of
‘rallying’ to the Socialist Alliance/SWP (if not today!), rather than as the
potential initiators of an independent political voice for workers, a new
workers’ party. Rather than meet the ‘what alternative?’ challenge with a
counter-challenge, a campaign for the new left union leaders (in the RMT, ASLEF,
the PCS, FBU, CWU and NUJ) to organise a cross-union rank-and-file conference to
discuss what steps are needed to build a new political alternative, a move which
would have a major impact on the situation in Britain, the Socialist
Alliance/SWP lag behind. Whose Money? replies to the question, "Are
you calling for the unions to disaffiliate from Labour?" with a firm
"No – this debate is about something different". (p16) But what if a
real ‘questioning trade unionist’, prompted by the arguments of his or her
pro-Labour link leaders, insists on an answer?
A new workers’ party will not necessarily develop through
official structures of the unions, although in Australia the first, tentative
steps towards a new political alternative are coming from the unions, at least
in Victoria state. It is certainly unlikely that a majority of the larger
unions, at least nationally, would embrace a new party – the biggest unions
also remained wedded to the Liberal Party in the early days of the Labour
Representation Committee.
But as the New Labour government relentlessly pursues its
big-business agenda, particularly as the impact of the world economic downturn
makes itself felt, so the idea will relentlessly return to trade unionists in
struggle, that there must be an alternative. Socialists in the unions can play a
critical role in developing this consciousness, by bringing forward timely
proposals and arguments to push the trade unions into independent political
activity. But for guidance in this task they will have to look for a greater
clarity of ideas than can be found in this Socialist Alliance pamphlet.
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