18.01.1996

Leaving Labour

HATFIELD Main NUM branch calls for total disaffiliation from the Labour Party. The demand will face stiff opposition in the Yorkshire area.

Opposition will come hardest from that clique of strategically placed opportunists in the middle ranks of the union structure who have benefited greatly by the power of the NUM in local and national politics.

A great number of northern town and city councils have been virtually controlled by the NUM caucuses. Others too, coming from the cradle of Labour traditions, have their eyes set on future stardom, accepting the new realism of Blair in exchange for a seat on the benches of Westminster.

Others will have well worn arguments about patience and ‘waiting till the movement swings back our way’. Whisper the gospel of socialism while being endowed with the gold chain of municipal office - and we should call it ‘working within’.

Armies of locally spirited school governors and public committee holders will howl in genuine pain at the idea of cutting ourselves, or more particularly themselves, off from the gravy train and an easy life of the petty privileges of office.

None of this will have the slightest thing to do with class politics and whether or not the Labour Party is, was ever, or ever will be a vehicle for class struggle and changing the system.

Some will argue now is not the time - the incoming Labour government must have time to expose itself as anti-working class. What, again? Do we seriously need any further warning of the bare-faced austerity and anti-working class nature of Blair’s programme?

As miners, we are offered absolutely nothing as an alternative to the wrongs committed against us by the Tories. As a trade union, we will be subject to 99.9% of the same viciously anti-union laws. As an organisation within the apparatus of the Labour Party, we have been treated with the crudest contempt by Blair, the NEC and the shadow cabinet. This while donating massive amounts of money to running that outfit. Do we really need to pay someone else to kick us up the backside?

It is time we took our organisation out of the Labour Party, lest we lend our good name to what is about to follow.

Mineworkers reading this column must turn up en masse to mandate your branch delegate for the Hatfield resolution. Workers in other unions should set the ball rolling for general union disaffiliation from Blair’s Tory Party II.

We may not agree about what needs to replace Labour. Certainly I am not a convert to the notion of an SLP - whoever’s version you use.

But what we can agree on is, as Blair and his new Labour Party clearly intend to sharpen the attack on the working class, workers’ defence organisations in the shape of unions must sever all links with it and clear the lines of fire.

It is time for some fresh air. The stink of rotten principles is unBlairable.

Dave Douglass