In light of the increased support for Reform UK among some sections of the working class, including some trade union members, what approach should the trade unions take toward their members currently looking towards or even joining Reform?
This was a question posed sharply at the meeting of the National Executive Committee of the University and College Union (UCU) at the start of May. An emergency motion was submitted that proposed to ban Reform members from the union by adding Reform UK to the list of extreme far-right organisations currently prohibited from UCU membership in the union rules.
The catalyst for the motion was reports that a Reform councillor has been delegated to attend the UCU congress. While this particular motion was ruled out of order, the issue of banning individuals and groups associated with Reform could well come up in different forms across trade unions and student organisations in the coming months and years.
Variations of UCU’s far-right proscription approach is in the rulebooks of many trade unions, following an amendment to the Employment Rights Act (ERA) in 2008. The act introduced a clause allowing trade unions to expel or exclude individuals who belong to a particular political party, if membership of that party is contrary to the rules or objectives of the trade union.
Before that, it was unlawful for a trade union to exclude membership on the grounds of being a member of a lawful political party – a clause put in place under Margaret Thatcher to strengthen state regulation of the unions and weaken their collective consciousness and organisation cohesion.
In the 1990s and early 2000’s, the far-right British National Party (BNP) was increasingly exploiting that clause. BNP members joined unions, infiltrated workplaces, attempted to wreck the functioning of trade union branches and subvert industrial action. They challenged union expulsions, winning hefty payouts in some cases and diverting union funds to legal battles.
In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the train drivers’ union ASLEF’s decision to expel from membership a BNP candidate who stood in the 2004 local elections. Subsequently, the ERA was amended.
Is that same strategy of expulsion the best means of challenging support for Reform UK? As a right-populist party, Reform is not of the same character as far-right parties such as the BNP or fascist organisations whose aims include the destruction of the trade unions and the working class’s ability to organise to defend itself against the attacks of the capitalist class. This is not an incidental difference, but fundamental to the question of the best methods of undermining their base in the working class and the trade unions.
Reform’s leaders pose as anti-establishment. Thousands voted for them in order to express anger with all the mainstream capitalist parties, especially Labour and the Tories. Reform has posed as being a party of workers, with some effect. One poll found 22% of people classified as working class believed Reform to be the party that most represented the working class. Unsurprisingly, the strongest response however was that “no such party exists”.
Reform is not a party for the working class. The party now has in its ranks eight former Conservative Party MPs, it has opposed legislation aimed at improving workers’ rights and supports privatisation, including of the NHS. Nigel Farage is an ex-banker who received a £5 million ‘gift’ from a crypto boss. Reform offers no solutions to the problems working-class people face.
A motion to UCU congress last year correctly characterised Reform as posing a threat to working class and cross-community solidarity. It highlighted that many of their policies are racist policies. Reform councils are attacking ESOL courses (English for Speakers of Other Languages) to the detriment of UCU members, students and the wider communities further education colleges are situated in.
All these statements are true. But, of course, the same could also be said for both Labour and the Tories. Both have whipped up anti-migrant rhetoric. Tory austerity contributed to a slashing of ESOL budgets by 60% in real terms between 2010 and 2018. Hostile migration policies have restricted staff and students from bringing dependents to the UK, including UCU members. This has also exacerbated university funding crises, contributing to the loss of thousands of jobs. Labour has done nothing to reverse these measures and is now introducing an international student levy.
No one is seriously proposing banning Labour or Tory members from participation in UCU on this basis. Nor are they conflating the views of all Labour and Tory members as one and the same as their party leaders.
The social base and membership of Reform is not the same as the BNP, although some of their former members have joined Reform. Where this has come to light, Reform itself has taken action to expel or drop several candidates accused of having links to far-right, racist, or extremist ideologies, in an attempt to moderate its image in order to broaden its electoral support. In fact, all the mainstream parties, including the Greens, have had former BNP members join them who have subsequently been expelled.
Overwhelmingly, polls show that the political consciousness of Reform members and supporters is far from fixed. The vast majority believe that the rich benefit at the expense of the poor, they support higher taxation for the rich and the nationalisation of the utilities, and the scraping of zero-hour contracts. All are positions out of step with the Reform leadership.
Banning such members from the union would clearly do nothing to undermine support for Reform amongst the working class and in the unions. On the contrary, such a strategy would be entirely counterproductive. It would position the trade union movement as being on the side of the establishment, not prepared to lead a fight against the major, legitimate concerns of working-class people about the cost of living, the state of housing and public services.
Instead these are precisely the issues that the trade union movement should be at the forefront of fighting against, as part of a broader struggle against Labour austerity and attempts to make workers’ pay the cost of the capitalist crisis, including capitalist wars.
More than anything at this stage, the Reform vote represents anger at Labour and the Tories’ continual austerity. The trade union movement will not undermine support for Reform unless it goes beyond opposing Reform in words and leads the fight against austerity in practice. Mobilising the 6.5 million trade union members to fight the rising cost of living and attacks to services would demonstrate the shared interests and potential power of the united working class.
Similarly counterproductive is the idea promoted by numerous trade union leaders that sticking to Labour is necessary to beat Reform. In fact, the Reform councillor at the heart of the debate in UCU was purportedly elected as a Labour councillor and subsequently defected to Reform. Had the UCU leadership seriously implemented Motion 63 passed at UCU congress last year, which called for new political representation for the working class and for UCU to support standing its own candidates in elections, it is not ruled out that some of those who have subsequently turned to Reform could instead have joined a party based on trade unionism and working-class organisation.
The evasion of a serious industrial and political campaign against Labour austerity, including taking steps toward building a trade union-backed political alternative, stems from the outlook of the trade union leadership. Voicing opposition to Reform, including calling for votes against Reform, does not bring the trade union leadership into confrontation with the Labour government or, behind them, the capitalist class.
That does not mean they are not worried about growing support for Reform among their ranks, particularly in the industrial unions. However, they do not have an effective strategy for countering Reform while also avoiding confrontation with Labour.
In April, the trade unions, including UCU, were some of the main organisers of the ‘Together’ demo, mobilising tens of thousands of members and giving a glimpse of the potential strength of an anti-racist movement, especially if it is led by the trade unions. However, the slogan of ‘love, hope and unity’ did nothing to undermine Reform’s support in the English local elections and Welsh Senedd election less than a month later.
The Together demonstration could have been an opportunity to launch the campaign of Jobs, Homes and Services – not racism and division, as was the policy adopted at TUC congress in 2018 and never implemented. Also not organised was the TUC anti-austerity demonstration that was voted for at the 2025 TUC congress. Some UCU officers instead implied Together was itself the anti-austerity demo despite no slogans to that effect appearing on any major union placard.
Therefore, combating Reform and undermining support for it within the working class and trade unions is linked to the battle within the unions for a fighting leadership. It is an urgent task for left trade unionists to organise in order to put maximum pressure on the leaders, including challenging for leadership. It also involves fighting for the unions to organise a cross-union conference on political representation.
Higher Education is already coming under attack as different capitalist representatives clash over the role of universities for 21st-century British capitalism in decline. Universities are the ‘ideas factories’ of the ruling class. ‘Liberalism’ has been the dominant discourse for the past period, but this is increasingly coming under fire from sections of the capitalist class, including those on the right lining up behind Reform.
The argument that universities are too ‘liberal’, and that right-leaning staff and students are marginalised, is one feature of the debate, and is already contributing to measures in the name of ‘enforcing freedom of speech’ that have been used to repress union and student activists. Organising in the workplace is the best means of defending members and students against such attacks. In other words, turning union policy into action.
Also important is building democratic union branches with open political debates about the best policies to defend members’ interests. All reps and delegates should be democratically elected. Members deciding who is the best representative for the branch is one means of preventing right-wing wreckers, or individuals with views contrary to the interests of the union being delegated to UCU events and conferences.
Following the elections May 7, many trade union activists will be thinking about the best means of defeating Reform. Many of them will recognise that the current strategy of the unions is not enough. How trade unions respond to individual members that have joined Reform is not a separate task to the broader role the trade union movement needs to play in order to effectively combating Reform, along with the racism and division that their anti-migrant rhetoric is fuelling within working-class communities.
Bea Gardner