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Reclaiming Labour: if not now, when?
THE BOURNEMOUTH conference was certainly the most difficult
for Tony Blair since Labour came to power in 1997. The leadership was defeated
on policy motions on foundation hospitals and pensions. A constitutional
amendment was passed allowing future conferences to debate eight ‘contemporary
resolutions’ – four each from the unions and Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs)
– instead of the current limit of four. If that rule had operated this year
the conference would have debated opposition resolutions on Iraq and university
tuition fees. Overall, more conference floor defeats were inflicted on Tony
Blair this year than in his previous nine years as party leader.
This was the product of a more organised attempt at
collaboration between ‘awkward squad’ trade union leaders to use what
remains of the (formerly dominant) position the unions occupy within the Labour
Party structures – a majority of constituency delegates actually voted against
the amendment to give CLPs more chance to get resolutions debated! The big
unions ensured it was four union-sponsored motions that were selected in the ‘contemporary
resolutions’ conference ballot. However, because the Rail, Maritime and
Transport workers union (RMT) anti-war emergency resolution was reportedly not
backed by the GMB and AMICUS unions, the war was not debated.
After the 15 February mass anti-war demonstration, veteran
left-winger Tony Benn spoke of "a crunch time" for Tony Blair. He
could "now either be the leader of the Labour Party or leader of the war
party". (The Guardian, 17 February) Alan Simpson, secretary of the
Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, anticipated "a movement in the
Labour Party to indict him". Instead of an indictment of Blair, however, or
even a debate, delegates gave a standing ovation to ‘fraternal greetings’ in
praise of the ‘war on terror’ from the US-imposed ‘president’ of
Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
Alongside their efforts to seek – in vain – differences
of substance between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, the failure to ensure a debate
on the war shows the limits to how far some of the union leaders are prepared to
go to ‘reclaim Labour’. It is one thing to secure symbolic conference
victories on specific policy issues – which will anyway be ignored as was last
year’s resolution for an independent review of the government’s private
finance initiative (PFI) method of funding public services. It is another thing
to launch a real struggle, to ideologically and organisationally take on the
parliamentary leadership and its supporters in the party, and effectively
re-create the Labour Party – with the left unions at its core – out of the
present shell.
Outside of the formal conference proceedings, a fringe
meeting was jointly organised by five big union affiliates – AMICUS, the
Communication Workers Union (CWU), UNISON, and the TGWU and GMB general unions
– to announce a campaign to ‘Get Labour Back’. But this was not, as
inaccurately reported in The Guardian (2 October), a meeting "to launch the
so-called Labour Representation Committee (LRC)", an attempt to re-create
the coalition of trade unions and socialist activists which established the
Labour Party in 1906, in a parallel organisation to the moribund official New
Labour structures. That is a project being promoted by Mick Rix, the former
general secretary of the train drivers’ union, ASLEF, and John McDonnell MP,
chair of the Socialist Campaign Group. The latter sees an ‘LRC’ as a vital
organisational step given that "the party members and trade unionists who
have attended the numerous conferences, rallies and meetings under the banner of
‘reclaim’ or ‘save’ the party are increasingly frustrated at our failure
to move this agenda forward". (Labour Left Briefing, October 2003) But
while general appeals were made at the ‘Get Labour Back’ meeting to revive
union delegations to CLPs, there was no sign of a serious organised drive.
But would even a more organised coalition of the unions and
the Labour left to re-capture control of the Labour Party structures have any
prospect of success? The role of the CLP delegates at Bournemouth as the chief
support for the Blair leadership was not accidental. As Labour Party membership
has collapsed, from over 400,000 in 1997 to (officially) 248,294 at the end of
2002, so local parties, where they function at all, are dominated by councillors,
party officers, candidates for public sector appointments, etc. John McDonnell,
optimistically, sees the fact that "large numbers of CLPs are now either
defunct or meeting in a way that makes them inoperable… [as] an opportunity to
bring together people in a new organisational framework – trade unionists and
Labour activists – to take over the constituencies and consolidate at local
level the sort of coalition that has taken place nationally". (Solidarity,
9 October) But what prospects are there for an influx of new members? It hasn’t
happened in the past twelve, turbulent months, during the mass anti-war movement
or the fire-fighters’ dispute. But if not then, when? Simeon Andrews, the
Socialist Campaign Group co-ordinator forlornly concedes: "We are going to
have to accept that a new army of radical recruits to swell our [the left’s]
numbers in the party remains an unrealistic aspiration. The invasion of Iraq and
the continued dismantling of the welfare state and public services have seen to
that. We have to begin to turn things round with what we’ve got…". (Labour
Left Briefing, September 2003)
Moreover, serious moves to take over the party structures,
if they led to threats to unseat cabinet ministers or select left-wing
parliamentary candidates, would not be met with equanimity by the Labour Party
apparatus and, behind them, their ruling-class backers. George Galloway had the
support of Tony Benn, the former Labour leader Michael Foot, and the TGWU
general secretary Tony Woodley, yet he was still expelled. Other organisational
steps would also be taken.
The Bournemouth conference itself passed another
constitutional amendment changing the composition of the ‘Clause V’ body
which agrees the general election manifesto, adding officers from the national
policy forum and parliamentary committee (MPs) as yet further insurance against
any union influence. A review of the 1997 ‘Partnership in Power’
policy-making structures is planned for ‘after the 2004 conference’, but a
consultation paper has already asked whether local branches and CLPs are ‘relevant’
bodies. And state funding of political parties, likely now to be included in the
next manifesto, is another option to deal with any attempt to re-establish the
unions’ position inside the party.
The end-of-conference Guardian leader article was
unconcerned about "union power being used for desirable ends" inside
Labour’s structures, challenging this or that policy position. It warned,
however, "that does not mean that the unions should have a blank cheque.
Important aspects of their prescriptions are wrong, especially those that oppose
change and seek to turn back the clock". (2 October) Too much has been
invested in removing the potential for workers’ interests to be politically
represented through the Labour Party, for that to be lightly reversed.
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