08.05.2002

Strategic orientation

Socialist Party member Matt Wrack, author of the Socialist Alliance pamphlet Whose money is it anyway?, addressed the May 5 Weekly Worker open forum on the trade union political funds and the nature of the Labour Party. The comrade argues that the left needs to take a serious approach to both the trade unions and the Labour Party's historical mass base

A year ago the debate around the political funds emerged at a number of trade union conferences, including my own, the Fire Brigades Union. At that time, the largest group in the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, was clearly arguing for disaffiliation from the Labour Party. The slogans they put forward were 'Make the break with Blair' and 'Why are we funding New Labour?' This position actually put at risk the possibility of winning the argument that the majority of the left united around - the issue of democratising the political fund. There was an assumption in certain quarters that there would be an automatic process: there would be disillusion with Blairism, and an automatic shift to the Socialist Alliance. I have never seen it as being that straightforward. Hopefully that illusion has been substantially weakened. If you take account of the tiny forces which the SA still represents, obviously it was naive to expect that the trade unions were simply going to shift en masse from Labour to this new formation, which had not proved itself to any degree. In my own union, the advantage we had was that the debate predated the last general election and went back to 1996. Activists had had to consider a number of issues. In London, for example, our employing authority was led by Tony Ritchie, who was a Southwark councillor and head of the fire authority in London. At one point he was opposed by a Save Our Fire Service candidate. Ritchie got a bit worried about this, and insisted that the FBU, as an affiliated organisation, endorsed him as the candidate in the local election, which the regional executive at that time did. But this caused huge outrage among many members. Here was our union leadership endorsing a candidate who had supervised fire station closures and the loss of a thousand jobs. I think that explains why the debate was further ahead in the FBU than it was in some of the other unions. Activists, and a layer of members as well, had begun to question what we were doing automatically endorsing Labour candidates simply because they were Labour. That fed into the debate that took place inside the Socialist Alliance, around how we strategically argue on the question of political funds and the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party. Following last year's general election and a number of union conferences, the SWP shifted from their position of calling for disaffiliation to supporting the idea of democratisation. In fact this has gone so far that, when we discussed a fringe meeting for our conference this year, I suggested that we invite a speaker from the Scottish Socialist Party, and the SWP said they were worried about that because the SSP might be arguing for disaffiliation. Exactly like you were last year, I thought. The problem is, there does not seem to be any account given of why they have shifted - their activists have simply been told: we are now in favour of democratisation rather than disaffiliation. Further to this consensus that has emerged in the Socialist Alliance on the political funds, there is the issue of trade union policy towards Labour while they remained affiliated. The idea arose of placing demands on Labour - for example, on trade union representatives on the national executive, or on regional executives, and on trade union-sponsored MPs. That received a boost with the election of Bob Crow as general secretary of the RMT. One of the first actions that Bob Crow undertook was his letter to RMT-sponsored MPs, demanding to know where they stood on three key union policies. If they were not on board, he wrote, then funding would be withdrawn, with all the implications that go with it. One of the MPs who received this letter was John Prescott. Apparently he hit the roof at this outrageous effrontery. He gets a flat provided by the RMT in London, so this was hitting close to home. I think it was a significant development in the RMT, which should be welcomed and which we can use to try to develop similar approaches in other trade unions. That also raises a wider problem for the trade union leaders generally - and for left trade union leaders in particular. If certain Labour Party candidates and politicians are not worthy of the support of the RMT, the implication is they are not worthy of the support of other trade unions either. There was a hint earlier in the year that the GMB would either stand candidates against Labour, or would not endorse Labour candidates in the local elections, if they were in favour of privatisation. My own trade union leadership argued that we only fund a very small number of constituency Labour Parties and a very small number of MPs who are in line with us. But this is a cop-out, because they are ignoring the whole of the rest of the Labour Party. We need to challenge them over this. If they are saying that there are only a small number of Labour politicians who are worthy of trade union support, then the question obviously arises - what do we say about the rest of them? And if we are saying that Labour candidates in other constituencies are not worthy of support, then what are working people supposed to do in elections? Simply abstain? I get the impression that a number of left trade union leaders - the 'awkward squad', as they have been called - will possibly move in the direction of saying they are not going to give Blair a free ride, or automatically endorse Labour candidates, but will avoid the issue of what we say where the candidate is a Blairite. I want to highlight a number of other issues that have emerged in discussions around the political fund. The first is a general problem that socialists in the trade unions face - who are we taking the argument to? Is it a question of simply getting it through branch meetings that are attended by very few people, or is it a question of taking it to the wider membership? This dilemma is faced by many activists, although it varies according to the set-up of the particular trade union. At the end of my pamphlet is the slogan, 'Support only candidates that support our policies'. That is posed in a way that is aimed at trade unionists - how they should handle their political funds. If you take privatisation, most unions have policies opposed to it. Yet they support a party, and its candidates, which promotes privatisation. If candidates are clearly opposed to the policies of the trade union, then the union should not be using its funds to get them elected. Obviously the Socialist Alliance has a broader, political outlook than a trade union. So the SA should draw up its own criteria to assess Labour MPs and candidates, which I think is slightly different from how trade unions should handle Labour candidates (although socialists within a trade union would look at it from a socialist perspective as well). Another, related problem is that a layer of the rank and file might respond to our campaign by saying, 'We don't want to automatically fund Labour any more. In fact we don't want to fund any political party.' There is a danger that some will want to use union funds on a purely sectional basis: 'We will back politicians on a particular issue where it affects us' - as firefighters, as train drivers, or whatever. This is something we need to address in terms of arguing for a general working class and socialist approach. I mentioned earlier on that it is not automatic that the Socialist Alliance will receive the support of trade unions who are questioning their relationship with Labour. There are many other possibilities. Trade unions could stand candidates, and some of these candidates may not necessarily campaign around a socialist programme. One of the issues we have to address is how we relate to such developments which are likely to emerge in one form or another. I was a member of the Labour Party for 20 years. When we turned up at election time, people said, 'We have not seen you bastards for the past five years.' The Liberals won control of some councils in the 1980s on the basis of doing the work on the ground and undermining Labour's support in a number of areas. Labour had taken it for granted for decades that they just had to turn up at election time and people would vote for them. Obviously I am not arguing that we should simply adopt the Liberal tactics or politics. But the way they worked - distributing newsletters, and being seen to be the people who were actually doing things - had its effect. Similarly, if you are a trade unionist and just turn out to get yourself elected and do not take up the ABC issues that people want the union for, then you will not have any authority. I think there is a big problem to be addressed about how socialists operate in relation to elections. Part of the problem is that the SWP has suddenly shifted from condemning anyone who takes part in elections as inherently reformist, to suddenly doing the complete opposite without actually thinking it through. Where things are going in terms of trade union conferences this year I am not sure. In the case of the FBU, the executive council are putting documents to conference which seeks to centralise the political fund, in their own hands. Currently our regional committees have their own political funds, and the national executive are attempting to thwart last year's decision by saying that any regional committee which wants to support non-Labour candidates must refer that decision to the national committee for endorsement. And of course they would not endorse any such move. I don't know how conference will respond to that. It is possible that we may win amendments from the left to maintain the regional position as it is now. It is also possible that the executive might get their way completely. But that will not end the debate, which is only just starting to take off in other unions. Two recent articles in The Guardian - one from Bob Crow and Mick Rix; the other from Andy Gilchrist - have argued along very similar lines, describing the pressure from union members on the question of the Labour Party, and declaring that there needs to be a fight within Labour to reclaim it. Left trade union leaders are under pressure from the Socialist Alliance and others on the left on the question of the political fund, but they themselves are completely unwilling to lead a serious challenge within Labour and to consider, for example, the possibility of splitting. Therefore they try to cut across the issue of democratising the funds, saying the real question is to take the argument back into the Labour Party - Blairism is just a temporary thing, and we will get back to the good old days of beer and sandwiches at No10. I had a debate with Peter Taaffe at the Socialist Party conference on the correct strategic orientation towards the Labour Party. I raised the question of placing demands on trade union leaders within the Labour Party. That was completely dismissed. The Labour Party continues to receive millions of votes from working class people, and the Socialist Party leadership - and in the past the SWP leadership, although they have moved their position slightly - are completely ignoring this question of how to relate strategically to Labour, other than by trying to get people to leave it and join another organisation. It strikes me that out of a campaign for democratisation there is the possibility of a developing conflict between the trade unions and the Labour leadership. I think we should be encouraging that and trying to orientate towards it. It seems fairly obvious to me that we should be trying to split the Labour Party and split its working class base to a new formation of some sort. The problem, I think, is that a lot of the left are not even thinking about those sorts of issues.