09.07.2003

Where now for rail union?

Alan Stevens points to a 'pick 'n' mix' attitude to politics from the new trade union 'awkward squad'

As a young militant many years ago in the West India Docks I witnessed a crane driver pissing from his lofty cabin onto the head of a docks manager during a light shower of rain. It was one of those deeply satisfying moments when a worker vividly expresses the contempt held for a complete arsehole.

Last week’s conference of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers had a whiff of that admirably contemptuous approach about it. But it was not just some bravura performance in the face of an enemy - it was the outpoured rage of living through a thousand Blairite-inflicted injuries, and not only injuries against members of the RMT. Here was represented the anger of a class.

Though the RMT conference has set upon a different course to those big union ‘reclaim Labour’ conferences, the anger, frustration and thirst for an alternative is a general phenomenon. The unifying theme that runs across the whole union movement is that everyone has had enough of New Labour.

In the conferences of the big general unions the anger and frustration of activists and members with New Labour was constrained within a critical status quo. The left scored some points but were outmanoeuvred with relative ease and left-talking leaders were able to steer a course which saw Labour as the ‘only credible’ alternative.

The RMT conference was fiercer in its criticism and not prepared to be so constrained - and general secretary Bob Crow was less inclined to apply the brakes. Never a child of old Labour, he was not disposed to reclaim it. In any event he considers the campaign to reclaim the party to be a lost cause - a view shared by Mark Serwotka of the PCS, which is not affiliated to Labour.

At the conference the RMT voted to take the unprecedented step of allowing branches and regions to back candidates standing against New Labour. Branches and regions are also allowed to affiliate to other political parties. Bob Crow urged affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party but also, much more controversially, closer links with Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Support for Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is also on the cards.

However, there were a number of seemingly contradictory positions taken. As well as democratising the political fund, the conference voted for the inclusion in the rule book of affiliation to Labour (previously it was policy, but not rule). At the same time Bob Crow successfully managed to restrict nominal affiliated numbers to 5,000. Funding to Labour was again cut - this time in half to £12,500. Two years ago it was £180,000. A motion to remove the full-time RMT representative on the Labour Party NEC, Mick Cash, who frequently does not argue RMT policy, and replace him with someone who would, was opposed by Crow. It seems that a foot is being kept in the Labour Party door. This appears to be a tactic to maintain an organic link to the ‘reclaim Labour’ grouping whilst the struggle unfolds.

Opposing Labour candidates would put the RMT on a collision course with the party leadership. Expelling the RMT could inflame an already volatile situation; doing nothing could encourage other unions to follow the RMT lead. Already the broadcasting union, Bectu, is balloting for disaffiliation and, had the Fire Brigades Union not cancelled its conference, moves to break the link would have been on its agenda too. This is a difficult problem for Labour, but there exists the risk of a split in the movement. There is also an historic opportunity and how that opportunity is seized or lost could determine the shape of struggle for decades.

With RMT branches able to propose support for an assortment of left Labour, nationalist, working class and non-working class candidates and parties, we could see a disjointed free-for-all. This contrasts starkly with the collective political voice initiated by the forerunner of the RMT when it proposed the historic resolution that led to the establishment of the Labour Party a century ago.

However, it would be too easy to merely criticise what is the reaction of the RMT to real problems. The RMT decision neatly expresses the fact that the labour movement is at a crossroads. While others are holding back, the RMT is not willing to do so, but is unable to see a viable alternative route and makes do with hitting at New Labour with any stick that comes to hand. Voices at the conference (as in other union gatherings) demand the building of a socialist alternative - but how? On this the class needs clarity, but confusion and nostalgia reigns.

All this exposes a serious political weakness: the fragmentation, lack of strategic vision and consequent pick ’n’ mix tactics of most of the left.