15.09.2004

Pre-election rumbles

Having to rely on the trade union machine to do some of the important donkey work in the next general election, Tony Blair is prepared to promise the unions a few crumbs, says Eddie Ford

With a general election looming, the next time TUC delegates gather for the annual parliament of the trade union movement they might well be ‘enjoying’ life under a third successive Labour government. No wonder Tony Blair feels the hand of history on his shoulder.

It looks a reasonably safe bet too. Britain is still very much a two-party system of governance and the Tory Party languishes hopelessly in opinion polls. Having ditched his ‘modernisers’, Michael Howard has been unable to come up with anything much programmatically apart from the usual warmed-over Thatcherite fare. Pathetically, faced with what he says is a doomsday scenario of global warming, his answer is tax incentives.

Without any immediate Tory danger, it is hardly surprising that amongst the upper echelons of the trade union bureaucracy political nerves are beginning to get less jittery and appetites are being aroused. So this year there were distinct rumbles from the TUC jungle - particularly from the ‘big four’ of Unison, Amicus, TGWU and GMB, who came determined to flex a bit of muscle.

They were certainly ‘incentivised’ by recent comments from CBI director general Digby Jones, who, having dismissed trade unions as irrelevant, argued that the only “protection people need” in a tight labour market with a chronic skills shortage is to be “so adaptable, trained and valuable” so that no employer would dare “let them go or treat them badly”.

Of course, the individual worker and the boss do not face each other in the market place as equals. Workers have no means of production - despite their skills, adaptability and training, they are propertyless. Workers have no choice but to sell their ability to labour to one employer or another. Historically, it was that or starve. Now it is a grey existence on the dole. Hence trade unions, collective bargaining and workers’ solidarity. By combining together in the market place workers cannot abolish exploitation. That is the intrinsic limitation of trade unions. But unions can lessen competition between workers and significantly improve their lot.

Not that this year’s TUC had its eyes set on anything significant. The highest ambition seemed to be crumbs from the table of third-term Blairism. You could almost call the Brighton congress the Warwick congress, so often was July’s policy forum mentioned and treated almost as a talisman. True, Warwick involved some hard negotiations between the union tops and the Labour government hierarchy. But the result was hardly a give-away.

Trade unions remain painfully weak. Nevertheless there is at the base of society, and in every workplace too, growing, and increasingly angry, discontent. That is why officialdom is making so much of Warwick. They can claim to have delivered … something. Agreed, in the ‘accord’ were 56 specific areas where workers’ rights and conditions are to be marginally improved - such as the pledge to exclude bank holidays from the four weeks’ annual paid leave guaranteed to all workers.

Though the newly appointed election manifesto supremo, Alan Milburn, might privately be tempted to water down these commitments, the big four were determined that he should do no such thing. So, as congress began, we had Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, describe Warwick as “sacrosanct”. Kevin Curran, GMB general secretary, warned: “Tinker with Warwick and you tinker with the relationship. We’re very clear: if they don’t stick to Warwick, there will be a falling-out - no question about it.” In a similar vein, Tony Woodley of the T&G declared: “We will stick to the agreement. I call on ministers to do the same.”

Tony Blair is acutely conscious that rank and file morale in the Labour Party has collapsed. So too has membership and crucially organisation. Ward and constituency Labour parties are empty husks. For the forthcoming general election he will therefore have to rely on the trade union machine and all its small army of full timers to do the donkey work. In return he is indeed prepared to promise a few crumbs.
Blair said: “I come here to praise Warwick, not bury it.” He made a show of backing the extension of job protection across the public sector for workers transferred from government employment to private sector contractors - the two-tier workforce. Blair also cynically congratulated trade unions for embracing “partnership” and rejecting “conflict” - code words for class collaboration and selling out those workers in struggle.

Not that his government is looking to end its conflict with the PCSU by withdrawing the threat to sack 100,000 civil servants. The Tories’ anti-trade union laws are to be kept intact as well. Nor, predictably, was Blair repentant about his warmongering in Iraq. Despite that, given the blatant lies about WMDs and the quagmire that is now Iraq, it is hardly surprising that he is trying to shift debate away from the international arena and George Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’. He wants to concentrate on domestic issue. Hence his closing phrase, “Even if I’ve never been away, it’s time to show I’m back.”

Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, was easily impressed. Blair’s speech apparently passed his “two key tests”. Besides Warwick, it showed the prime minister “at ease with the trade union movement” and setting out a clear role for unions in making Britain “a fairer place”. Prentis agreed. He claimed that Blair’s speech was a “welcome start” - even that it represented a “remarkable change of tone”. But Prentis did bravely ask him to speak in a “similar vein” at the Labour Party conference and when he meets with the CBI.

A more barbed reaction to Blair’s honeyed rhetoric came from Woodley. After claiming that “there is now clear blue water between us and the incompetent Conservatives”, he stated his hope that there will be “no more crackpot ideas” - such as foundation hospitals. A clear reference to Alan Milburn - former minister of health.

His promotion to chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - on a basic £127,000 salary - ignited much excitable talk from media pundits and ‘Westminsterologists’ about a Blairite “putsch” against the “Brownites”. For example, we read the following extended headline in The Observer: “Gordon’s nightmare - For a decade it seemed that Gordon Brown was the natural successor to Tony Blair. But can he still be so sure? Last week’s elevation of Alan Milburn changed the political landscape” (September 12). Fuel to the conspiratorial fire was added when Stephen Byers, former cabinet secretary, went on record saying that Milburn would make an “excellent prime minister”.

Though Brown is a proven servant of capitalism and imperialism, for ‘left’ bureaucrats he is a totemic figure, enabling them to push the fantasy that Brownism represents the still beating heart of old-time Labourism and a hope for them all when Blair finally decides to move on to pastures new. Milburn ruins this ‘strategy’.