04.07.2001

Democratise union funds

The rift between the trade unions and New Labour is steadily widening, with both sides continuing to fire warning shots this week.

Most significant was the resolution passed at the annual general meeting of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union: "This AGM declares that it cannot and will not support a Labour government that has deserted its working class roots and supporters and jumps into bed with its big business friends. It therefore declares that, unless these disastrous policies are changed, we will no longer support them politically or financially."

True, the AGM then passed an apparently contradictory resolution reaffirming the RMT's current attachment to Labour, but nobody can doubt the significance of the move. It followed a similar decision by the public service union, Unison, which is to "review" its financial support for the Labour Party, and that of the Fire Brigades Union, which has decided to permit support, from its political fund, of non-Labour Party working class candidates in elections (see Weekly Worker June 28).

Meanwhile, the Financial Times detailed a proposed change to Labour Party rules, for discussion at its autumn annual conference, which has been sent this week to unions and party members. This reads: "Organisations which support, financially or otherwise, the candidature of any person standing for election in opposition to a duly endorsed Labour candidate, or which support a registered political party other than the Labour Party (in areas where the Labour Party is organised), shall be ineligible for affiliation to the party" (June 26).

Interestingly, the FT piece ended with the observation, "The Socialist Alliance, which combines the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the old Militant Tendency and other hard left groups, has been blamed for the escalation in wildcat postal strikes and industrial action on the railways."

There were different views on the identity of a co-respondent, however, in Kevin Maguire's article of the same date, 'It could end in divorce' (The Guardian June 26). Unions dissatisfied with being required to "dance to the tune of the piper they pay", may apparently be seduced by the charms of the Liberal Democrats, who have been instrumental, in the Scottish parliament, in delivering double-digit pay rises for teachers, abolition of university tuition fees and free care for the elderly, Maguire speculated. The FT joined in the mischief on June 29, when it ended an interview with Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, with the aside, "Mr Morris now speaks warmly of the Liberal Democrats."

The TGWU conference, meeting this week, was due to discuss yet another motion, proposing a re-evaluation of this union's links with Labour. Morris will resist these calls, the FT informed readers, whilst stressing the TGWU's "independence" and its right to "oppose the government when it is in our members' interests".

Morris had been present, along with Dave Prentis, John Edmonds and John Monks, general secretaries respectively of Unison, the General, Municipal and Boilermakers union and the Trades Union Congress, when the union leaders met Tony Blair in Downing Street on June 27 to express their concerns at the contents of the queen's speech with respect to the government's intention to vastly increase the proportion of public sector functions to be handed over to private capitalists.

Prentis, newly identified by Socialist Worker as a leftwinger (June 30), told The Guardian that none of the issues defining what he hoped would be a "marginal" role for private companies had been resolved at the meeting. This is no surprise. Blair is determined to carry through his offensive, which he and chancellor Gordon Brown had made crystal clear in their pre-election speeches to business audiences is the key to their programme for "making Britain the best place in the world to do business". Not least amongst Blair's motivations of course, is the desire to break public sector trade unions, which, despite two decades of decline, still have 60% of the workforce in membership, as against just 19% in the private sector.

Unison, the GMB and TGWU have already announced that they will launch a joint campaign to "defend public services" in the autumn and the issue is certain to loom large at the Labour Party conference, at which the trade unions still command half of the votes. This forthcoming clash makes the lobby of the conference, proposed by the executive committee of the Socialist Alliance, an important moment for the nascent forces of independent working class politics to intersect with the crisis-ridden politics of Labourism. The intervention - clearly the first high-profile post-election activity of the SA - needs to be thoughtfully and carefully prepared. First steps can be taken towards winning the most advanced workers away from Labourism.

Mistakes are also possible of course, and in this respect the five pages of Socialist Worker dedicated to the privatisation row were disappointing in the extreme (June 30). This paper of the Socialist Alliance's numerically largest component organisation displayed a familiar and tired old politics. Pride of place was devoted to the syndicalism which has been at the root of the SWP's politics and that of its forerunners. More strikes and pressure from the left upon union leaders to call "the popular hard-hitting action that can stop privatisation" are the answer, according to the comrades.

Industrial action, and especially generalised industrial action, are of course very important, but the working class will only make permanent advances when it becomes a political class. This much is elementary Marxism. The enormously significant political developments, arising from the Labour Party funding debates, are confined by Socialist Worker to a secondary commentary only.

Our immediate task in relation to the trade unions is to fight for the democratisation of political funds, so as to give direction and coherence to the various expressions of discontent over the Labour link. It would be a bad mistake to demand that unions simply up and out. We are faced with a very long, difficult fight to win over whole sections of workers organised in the unions to a left-of-Labour alternative. Supporters of the Socialist Alliance must argue patiently for union members to back the SA - in opposition to the motion on Labour's conference agenda.

It is only as a centralised and fully democratic party that the SA can hope to direct and benefit from the mood against New Labour and moves, by what is clearly a significant number of trade union militants, towards independent working class politics. If such a party is not achieved, those breaking will have nowhere else to go. The prospect of a further depoliticisation of the working class would be very much on the cards.

The onus is on all of us. Together we must transform the SA - so as to win the leadership not only of trade union members, but of all workers.

Derek Hunter