22.11.2001

Trade union left

United fightback needed

This weekend sees yet another initiative from the trade union left in the shape of an anti-privatisation conference hosted by a variety of broad lefts and official union bodies.

The action that will hopefully flow from it is vitally needed. As the Blair government continues to push through its private finance offensive, the leadership has on occasion talked tough, but failed to deliver any concrete opposition. Rightwinger John Edmonds of the GMB has floated the idea of standing anti-privatisation/pro-public services candidates in elections. This does at least have the effect of causing his union?s rank and file to think about some kind of collective action in opposition to Blair, and it is a debate the left ought to take up. However, no doubt it is meant as a warning - a shot over the government?s bows.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, has likewise made a few militant noises, in order to reflect the anger felt by hundreds of thousands of public sector workers. The bureaucracy is keenly aware of the extent of this feeling, since in the last election for general secretary two left candidates, representing the Campaign for a Fighting and Democratic Unison (CFDU) and the Hillingdon Hospital strikers respectively, gained a joint vote of well over 40% - this despite failing to generate the momentum that a single, united candidate would have produced. Prentis has called a day of action outside parliament on Tuesday December 4, but at a time most guaranteed to have the minimum of impact. There is to be no attempt to mobilise Unison?s huge membership: just the thin layer of full-timers.

Quite obviously the situation calls for rank and file initiatives. Unfortunately the left still seems stuck in the sectist dark ages of years gone by. Many unions have several competing broad lefts - some good, some not so good; some leftwing, some that are not particularly leftwing at all; and some that act as private election machines for full-time officials (the TGWU being a good example).

The advent of the Socialist Alliance has given the left unity project in the unions a much needed kick-start. In Unison and elsewhere the Socialist Workers Party has begun to pool its efforts with others, where before it spurned left cooperation, even in the field of union elections. However, the unity is tenuous and edgy and it is fair to say that even some of the better organised broad lefts are little more than election groupings. We must aim to take them way beyond their current stage of development, so they are not only transformed into real rank and file fighting bodies, but become part of the drive towards building a real political alternative based on the SA.

It is unfortunate, then, that the current period is seeing the organisation of separate events, often with similar or exactly the same terms of reference, by different left groups. It is a case of either incompetence or downright sectarianism. Saturday?s conference has been largely driven by the Socialist Party and would appear to be exactly the same fare as promoted by Unions Fightback, whose own conference a fortnight ago was kicked off by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCSU, and a host of other leading trade union militants. This was an initiative of the Alliance for Workers? Liberty. It is all very sad.

These events should have been coordinated through the Socialist Alliance, which must act as a central coordinator, discouraging its affiliates from acting with such amateurism/sectarianism (you decide). In all fairness to the Unions Fightback organisers, they have been at pains to stress the need for united action and for a joint committee/organisation to emerge from this debacle.

To make matters worse, the Unions Fightback meeting clashed with the founding conference of Unison United Left, which saw the coming together of the CFDU, the SWP and some smaller elements. This was because the UUL postponed its gathering from October 13 to avoid a clash with the first big London anti-war demonstration. The clash that actually occurred as a result was worse than the one it was designed to avoid.

All this makes us look like characters from Pulp fiction trying to get one over on each other at every available opportunity - or perhaps like something from a Norman Wisdom comedy. Sectism or amateurism - either way we must rise to the tasks before us in a more democratic and effective manner.

Bill Jeannes