All posts by

Democracy and the Labour Party, Trade unions

Labour: Unions vote to be distanced

Gallery

Delegate Charles Gradnitzer reports on Labour’s special conference

As readers will know, the Labour Party endorsed the Collins review at its special conference held in London on March 1. Collins requires trade unionists to “opt in” to become second-tier members of the Labour Party, introduces ‘one member, one vote’ for elections of the party leader, imposes primaries for the selection of the candidate for London mayor against the wishes of London Labour and requires “registered supporters” to pay a fee for the privilege.1

Nobody expected conference to be anything other than a rubber-stamping exercise to give the ‘reforms’ a democratic veneer. The apparatchiks of the Labour Party are such experts in stage-management and stitch-ups, they could make a lucrative career teaching theatre and haberdashery.

In the run-up to conference delegates received numerous letters from Ed Miliband urging us to vote for the reforms. One such letter told the story of Paul, a lifelong trade unionist and figment of Miliband’s imagination, who finally joined the Labour Party after the reforms were announced – on the basis that “until now the party never felt democratic. It never felt like one I could join.” This anecdotal approach was commonplace throughout the entire affair.

One encouraging development before the conference had been the February Young Labour conference, which had narrowly voted to reject Collins. This came as a surprise to many, as Labour Students has often been dominated by rightwing careerists, and prompted Labour Party headquarters to issue a statement explaining that “some people may find change difficult to accept”.2

But there was no chance of that being repeated on March 1, despite the opposition of several groups which turned up outside the Excel Centre. Labour Party Marxists was amongst them, distributing our special bulletin.3 The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy had produced its usual Yellow Pages,4 which comrades from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Labour Representation Committee and Socialist Appeal were helping to distribute.

Surprisingly, a small contingent from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was also opposing the reforms. In a rather surreal scene the comrades – no doubt members of the Socialist Party in England and Wales – followed Ed Miliband in their dust masks, shouting, “Don’t let Labour silence the unions”, as he arrived.5

Inside the hall Miliband used his opening speech to attack the Conservative Party as a bunch of “out-of-touch toffs” and joked feebly that the Liberal Democrats would have their next conference in Nick Clegg’s local garden centre or a telephone box.6 And there were more of those anecdotes. We were told about Tracey, a union member and mother of three who had not voted in 20 years. She feels as though politics does not speak to her. Assuming she is not another figment of Miliband’s imagination or a product of his PR team, it was unclear exactly how these reforms were going to convince “Tracey” to vote for the party, let alone join it.

What his speech lacked was any logic or reason bridging the chasm between his truisms and the reforms he was asking us to vote for. It is perfectly true, for example, that movements change things and that it was the labour movement that won workers’ rights at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was not explained how completely ending collective affiliation or imposing primaries for the London mayoral selection would build on those achievements.

But, of course, making Labour part of a vibrant mass movement is the last thing Miliband wants to do. And his nod in the direction of the party’s reformist past was at odds with his assertion that he found support for nationalisation “worrying”. Even though polls show 70% support for renationalisation of the utility companies and the railways7and such a policy was passed unanimously at the 2013 Labour conference, it is clear that, in a tradition stretching back to the 1924 Ramsay MacDonald government, this policy will be ignored by the parliamentary party on the ostensible grounds that Labour needs to show that it is “fit to govern”.8

Fair and balanced 

When Miliband had finished, a point of order was raised by a CLPD supporter – who was booed and jeered, as she walked up to the rostrum – presumably for exercising her basic democratic right. She asked why there had been no conference arrangements committee report and what had happened to the emergency motions that had been submitted by several CLPs calling for the review to be taken in parts.9

Angela Eagle replied from the chair to the effect that the CAC had met in January, and immediately asked, “Can we please move on?” – to the enthusiastic applause of many. Clearly if the CAC met in January, then it would not have been able to consider submitted motions or actually do any arranging, as the Collins review was not published till February.

Speakers were called in rounds of three and the first six were all in favour of Collins. Their speeches were obviously well rehearsed and followed the same disjointed, truism-cum-‘support the reforms’ pattern of Miliband’s speech.

Several union general secretaries walked up to the rostrum to urge delegates to vote in favour. They included Paul Kenny (GMB), who not eight months ago had opposed the reforms on the Todayprogramme.10 He was followed by Dave Prentis (Unison), Len McCluskey (Unite), John Hannett (Usdaw) and Tosh McDonald (Aslef), who all praised Miliband and called for a Labour victory in 2015.

Eventually Angela Eagle asked those opposed to the reforms to indicate if they wanted to speak, but, despite her promise of a balanced debate and the comparatively large number who had indicated, only six out of 27 people called from the floor were opposed to the review. They included Pete Firmin, political secretary of the Labour Representation Committee, who has written a report of the conference for the LRC website,11 and Dame Margaret Beckett.

Steve Brown argued that the way to win mass support for the Labour Party was through having “good policies”, such as renationalisation, while Richard Johnson said that the move to an opt-in system could lead to a £7 million shortfall in party funding, which could only be mitigated by state funding and so would be unpopular with the electorate.

When it came to the vote, 96% of the affiliates (mainly trade unions) and 74% of the Constituency Labour Parties voted in favour of the reforms, giving a total of 86.29% in favour and 13.71% against.

The closing speech was delivered by Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth, who congratulated Angela Eagle on her “fair and balanced” chairing. Though laughable, this was hardly surprising, coming from a man who was once national secretary of Labour Students.

Reclaim the unions

The opt-in system was originally introduced by the Tories in the 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act in order to damage the Labour Party and was finally repealed in 1945 by the Attlee government. It resulted in an 18% decrease in party funding.12 Which begs the question: is the Labour Party committing financial suicide? The answer to that perhaps lies in the timetable.

The Collins review establishes an implementation group to oversee the reforms. The timetable given for the transition from ‘opt-out’ to ‘opt-in’ for the unions is five years – well after the next general election. However, if in 2015 Labour is unable to secure state funding for political parties by forming a government either alone or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who also support state funding,13 then the whole thing could be dropped.

The other question is, why did the unions overwhelmingly vote to end collective affiliation? Christine Shawcroft, in her report of the national executive meeting that endorsed Collins, said: “I believe that several trade union delegates opposed the report, but felt that they were in a difficult position: as their general secretaries had negotiated the proposals, they didn’t feel they were able to vote against.”

The union bureaucrats were always going to come to a compromise. They were never going to vote against. This is hardly in the interests of their members, as collective affiliation represented a progressive gain for the working class. Those arguing for Collins championed liberal individualism over collective decision-making. But, once a democratic decision has been made by a collective organisation – whether to collectively affiliate to a political party or vote for industrial action – there should be no right for individuals to opt out: ie, to scab, either politically or economically.

In an article entitled ‘Labour has betrayed its roots by distancing itself from the unions’14 Bianca Todd of Left Unity has argued that Labour is no longer the party that reflects trade union values, the party of people like her father, Ron Todd, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. Since it is now hopeless trying to “reclaim” the Labour Party, disenchanted members should join Left Unity instead.

Leaving aside the fact that the trade unions themselves block-voted for Labour to ‘distance itself’ from them, when has the party ever ‘reflected trade union values’, let alone acted in the class interests of workers? It was precisely because the Labour Party sought to become a respectable party of government, to demonstrate that it was “fit to govern”, that it has repeatedly “betrayed” the working class. Because it sought to manage capitalism (allegedly in the interests of the working class), it had no option but to behave in that way.

So the idea that a Labour Party mark two would behave differently is absurd – not that LU has any hope of becoming one. Left-of-Labour electoral projects come and go, but have never offered a real alternative; they merely promise the same thing – a ‘fairer’ capitalism, thanks to sensible Keynesian management. But how that will happen without Labour’s established voter base and trade union backing is anyone’s guess.

The Labour Party can be neither ‘reclaimed’ – it was never ours – nor sidestepped. Yes, it is possible for the union leaders to demand policies in the interests of their members, but that assumes that those leaders are accountable to their members in the first place. By winning control of our own organisations – first and foremost the unions – we could hope to transform Labour into a different sort of party. But the Labour question must be confronted head on; we cannot wish it away.

Notes

1. www.scribd.com/doc/210583833/THE-COLLINS-REVIEW-INTO-LABOUR-PARTY-REFORM.

2. http://labourlist.org/2014/02/labour-hq-defends-party-reforms-as-young-labour-votes-to-oppose-collins-review.

3. http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/lpm4_feb2014.pdf.

4. http://home.freeuk.net/clpd/Yellow_Pages_140301.pdf.

5. http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/18236/03-03-2014/tusc-campaigners-cause-stir-at-labour-rules-change-conference.

6. www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/03/ed-milibands-speech-labours-special-conference-full-text.

7. http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

8. RN Kelly, J Cantrell Modern British statesmen 1867-1945Manchester 1997, p149.

9. www.christineshawcroft.co.uk/nec/20140204.

10. http://labourlist.org/2013/07/paul-kenny-says-wed-be-lucky-to-get-10-of-gmb-members-opting-in-to-the-party-might-such-low-take-up-end-the-union-link-by-default.

11. http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/labours-special-conference-report.

12. SJ Lee Aspects of British political history 1914-1995 Oxford 1996, pp94.

13. The Guardian September 6 2013.

14. The Guardian March 3 2014.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance

Gallery

Is there a case for the left to field its own candidates for Labour’s National Executive Committee? Ken Williamson calls for the left to take courage

Only two NEC members, Christine Shawcroft and Dennis Skinner, voted against the Collins review on February 4, and one of the six Unite delegates, Martin Meyer, abstained.

This has caused some confusion on the left. The Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance has chosen a six-strong slate for the next NEC election … and some comrades cannot now countenance voting for Ann Black and Ken Livingstone because they voted for the Collins review. However, backing the slate is common sense: after all, it is the only ‘left’ show in town. And supporting the six does not – must not – mean keeping criticisms private. We need to engage the rank and file in political discussion on every issue, to develop understanding. Withdrawing support from NEC members would be churlish and sectarian – if the left cannot summon the courage to field its own candidates. Nominations are open until June 20. Indeed it would be quite legitimate for us on the left to put up NEC candidates in order to fight openly for our strategic aim of winning active mass support for the political programme of working class socialism, and rebuilding the trade unions and Labour Party on socialist lines as part of that strategy.

In point of fact, that would be the best way to critique the “progressive policies” of the CLGRA slate, which dreams of a leftwing Labour government running a reformed British capitalism (Ed Miliband’s vision), in which funding “improvements in housing, health, education, transport and state pensions” depends on getting the (British, capitalist) economy growing. An Ed Miliband government, like all previous Labour governments running capitalism, will attack our class and undermine and weaken the workers’ movement. Rebuilding our movement from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe.

Europe, Nationalism and internationalism

Europe and the politics of fraud

Gallery

John Fuller Carr examines the divisions that plague establishment politicians and takes to task the Labour Representation Committee for its cowardly, nationalist retreat

Europe continues to enrage, divide and confuse politicians of both the right and left. The present situation is easy to summarise. Under severe pressure from the United Kingdom Independence Party, David Cameron has committed the Tories to an in-out referendum, but not until after the 2015 general election. If returned to No10, he solemnly pledges to negotiate a root-and-branch reform of Britain’s relationship with Brussels. A forlorn hope. François Hollande crushingly informed him at their January 2014 summit, that renegotiating EU treaties “is not a priority for France”.1

Smelling blood, Nigel Farage says he will turn the May 2014 European election into a referendum against Bulgarian and Romanian migrants and continued EU membership. Worryingly, an Open Europe poll puts Ukip on 27% – significantly ahead of Labour (23%) and the Tories (21%).2 Meanwhile, Ed Miliband made a show of expressing contrition over the last Labour government getting it “wrong” over EU immigration. Prompting some Labour MPs – eg, Rochdale’s Simon Danczuk – to join the “send people back” campaign. Tom Harris (Glasgow South) even declared himself a member of the “Romaphobe club.”3

Clear direction

Establishment politicians find themselves confronted with a fundamental fault line. European integration has advanced qualitatively since the Treaty of Rome was signed by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in 1957. What was a mere customs union – born of the cold war – has become a German-dominated giant, embracing 500 million people and 28 countries, with free trade and the free movement of labour. It is the world’s biggest home market, with a combined GDP of about $17.2 trillion – as compared to $16.7 trillion for the US and $5.9 trillion for Japan.

Politically, however, the EU resembles something like the creaking Austro-Hungarian empire, which straddled 19th century Mitteleuropa. The EU is an amalgam of unevenly developed state units. But the direction is clear. Wider, in the form of candidates like Iceland, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Deeper, in the form of politico-legal institutions. The EU has a council of ministers, the European Commission, an elected parliament, a European Court of Justice … and then, of course, there is the euro: a currency which unites 18 countries.

Behind the integration lies a blood-drenched past. Twice in the 20th century Europe has been the cockpit of global conflict. Both times Europe was left devastated, exhausted and much reduced. World War I saw the collapse of the Russian, German and Austro- Hungarian autocracies. The main focus of world economic activity shifted from Europe to the Atlantic and America. Twenty-five years later, under the terms of the Yalta agreement, half the continent was incorporated into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and, through bureaucratic revolution, ‘sovietised’.

As to western Europe, it was shorn of the glories – and booty – of empire. Humiliatingly it had to rely on the US nuclear umbrella to counter the much exaggerated threat from the east. However, avoiding another internecine conflict and creating a bulwark against bureaucratic socialism drove the states of western Europe, in particular Federal Germany and France, towards an historic compromise.

There is, needless to say, another factor at work. Europe both cooperates and competes with the US and Japan. They might have smaller home markets, yet, due to an historically constituted nationality and an economically centralised territory, they are blessed with a single working class and a single political and business elite. Labour power, like every other commodity, can easily move and therefore be bought and sold anywhere within the US or Japan. Europe is divided not only by history, but culture. Commodities can freely circulate – but not the special commodity, labour-power. Language constitutes a material barrier, except for those with higher education (worst- paid labour being a not insubstantial exception). A multinational, and therefore fragmented, political and business elite constitutes a similar handicap. To be successful the EU must, as a minimum, therefore, forge a federal superstate, from where its transnationals can survive against the rising legion of foreign rivals.

The ongoing process of European integration has caused deep divisions in Britain. There were, in the late 1940s and early 50s, hubristic dreams of rebuilding the British empire. Suez 1956 put a stop to that. The US had unmistakably become top dog and would permit no imperial rivals. Barred from the Common Market in 1963 by de Gaulle’s veto, the British ruling class hung onto the conceit of being a major world power and actually managed to keep Europe divided through the European Free Trade Area. But that did not amount to a viable strategy. Britain eventually entered the European Economic Community in 1973 under Edward Heath’s Tory government (along with its Danish and Irish Efta allies). The unwritten agreement with Washington was that Britain would play the role of a US Trojan horse.

Apart from our far right around Roy Jenkins, the Labour Party was critical of the terms and conditions. Nonetheless in 1975 Harold Wilson’s government successfully fought a referendum on the issue of continued membership. The main opposition came from a Tony Benn-Enoch Powell popular front. Nevertheless, we remained officially uneasy about Europe till the leadership of John Smith and then the government of Tony Blair. A parallel shift occurred in the TUC with the appointment of John Monks.

New Labour and its coterie of middle class career politicians loyally and openly served the interests of the most competitive, most internationalised, sections of British capital. Despite his tack to the left, Ed Miliband and ‘One nation’ Labour does exactly the same.

Of the two main parties, it is the Tories who are organically split today. Though Cameron now calls for a “fundamental renegotiation” of Britain’s relationship with EU, everyone knows that, come his referendum, he will call for continued membership. That cannot be said of his revolting backbenchers. As with Ukip, his Poujardists articulate the xenophobic fears and prejudices of ‘middle England’ and uphold the interests of the least competitive sections of capital.

If the British establishment is divided, the groups, factions and sects of the left – Labour and non-Labour alike – have proved utterly incapable of providing anything like a serious alternative. In fact, the reformist and national socialist left adheres either to the most gullible or the most chauvinist positions on the EU.

Instinctively the national socialists recognise that European integration makes a mockery of their utopian British road to socialism. Take the No2EU election bloc – uniting the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain. It is virtually indistinguishable from the Tory right, Ukip and the British National Party. No2EU wants to save the pound sterling, restore British sovereignty and re-establish immigration controls to bar European incomers.

Naturally, when it comes to the likes of Peter Taaffe, Robert Griffiths, Bob Crow and Brian Denny, this is all done in the name of socialism … but it is the socialism of fools. The best that these advocates of “workers’ rights” could achieve is a British version of Stalinism – ie, state slavery – and that imposed onto a capitalistically advanced country fully integrated into the world economy. What costs the lives of millions in the 1930s could only but be repeated as a still greater tragedy.

Civilisation would not be advanced, but barbarically thrown back. And, unfortunately, where the CPB and SPEW have led, Socialist Resistance, Respect, the Alliance for Green Socialism, Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, etc, have followed – to the point of a horribly self- defeating common sense.

Of course, for Marxists, proletarian socialism – as the first stage or phase of communism – is international or it is nothing. There can be no socialism in one country, because capital, as a social relationship, exists not within the nation-state, but internationally, at the level of the global economy. Bureaucratic or national socialism just brings back all the old crap, albeit in different, highly contradictory forms. That is why as long ago as 1845 Marx and Engels emphatically rejected all localist schemes and insisted, on the contrary, that: “Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples ‘all at once’ and simultaneously.”4

LRC

Sadly, the leadership of the Labour Representation Committee seems to be readying itself to adopt an approach barely distinguishable from Taaffe and Griffiths. Having agreed a generally sound resolution on the EU in 2011, at its November 2013 AGM the LRC narrowly voted down a virtually identical motion in the name of “beginning” a debate on the EU. The manipulative hand of Graham Bash, Peter Firmin and co was clearly visible.

What were the politics of 2011? In contrast to the red-brown left, the LRC stood for “a Europe-wide working class response” to capitalism’s crisis. Instead of opposing “European capitalist integration”, the right answer is to “link up with other European workers in solidarity and struggle”. Moreover, those demanding withdrawal from the EU, or opposing British entry into the European single currency, were condemned for holding to “a British nationalist position”, a blunder “not altered” by tacking on a slogan like “Socialist United States of Europe”. Etc, etc.5

Now, in the name of “kicking the debate off”, we have Michael Calderbank of Brent CLP. Writing in Labour Briefing, he rightly takes to task those who have illusions in the progressive nature of the EU when it comes to labour legislation, social rights, etc … All are being “eroded and undermined”, he feigningly laments. Of course, what comrade Calderbank wants the LRC to do is to vote ‘no’ in Cameron’s referendum and bank everything on a British withdrawal.

As an aside, it is worth noting the objection Marxists have traditionally had to referendums. So-called direct democracy is a chimera in any complex society. Nuances have to be considered, likely consequences predicted and alternatives closely studied. That is why Marxists advocate indirect democracy: ie, the election of recallable representatives who are tasked with debating and deciding political positions and stratagems. Marx certainly denounced – and in no uncertain terms – Louis Bonaparte’s deployment of successive referendums to consolidate his dictatorship and excuse France’s imperial adventures.6

The wording of the referendum question is, of course, everything. Eg, to vote ‘no’ was to declare oneself opposed to democratic reforms; to vote ‘yes’ was to vote for despotism and war. Referendums bypass representative democracy, political parties and careful deliberation. Something not lost on Adolph Hitler. He managed to get a 90% mandate for his dictatorship on August 19 1934 – despite an almost unprecedented campaign of intimidation, there were millions of spoilt ballot papers.

Coloration

Inevitably, comrade Calderbank gives his endorsement of the ‘no’ campaign a socialistic coloration. Instead of “populist scapegoating” of migrants, he makes a seemingly bold call for “taking back power” and “taking control of our services and economies, on a local and national scale.”7 Does his formula amount to a post-referendum establishment of a workers’ state and the abolition of capitalism? Unlikely. Or is it an empty plea for the restoration of Keynesian economics and the politics of welfarism? Either way, the comrade says that “our membership of the EU” impedes his agenda, so “calling for a withdrawal from an international left perspective would be perfectly consistent”.8

When it comes to the LRC’s old position, the comrade dishonestly rejects any programme of fighting for a workers’ Europe as akin to banking on “adequately reforming” the “existing institutions” of the EU. An obvious non sequitur. Nevertheless, on the basis of this crude falsification, comrade Calderbank feels he can tell us what we all know. The EU is not very democratic … and he thinks it “extremely hard” to see how this can be changed.
The lack of imagination is as sad as it is palpable. Why those of us who want to take as our strategic point of departure not Britain, but the EU are supposed to believe in the reformability of the whole array of existing EU institutions remains to be established.

Apply his methodological approach to the British state. Over the last 30 years or so it has surely “eroded and undermined” the post-World War II consensus. Indeed, it is fair to say, successive British governments – Tory, Labour and Con-Dem – have been at the forefront of the neoliberal offensive both at home and in the EU. Should we therefore conclude with a call for the “dissolution” of Britain, as Welsh and Scottish nationalists do, or even a working class “withdrawal” from it?

Pitiably, comrade Calderbank unintentionally shows a naive faith in the institutions of the UK state: the monarchy, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the judiciary, the presidential prime minister, MI5, the Church of England, the standing army, etc. Can they all be “adequately” reformed so as to pave the way for a workers’ Britain? Clearly, the implication in comrade Calderbank’s polemic is, yes, they can.

Russia

Interestingly, prior to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks confronted similar manifestations of national socialism. The tsarist empire was a vast prison house of nations. Nevertheless, while fighting for the right of self-determination up to and including secession, the overriding, central strategy was the cementing of the highest and most extensive workers’ unity throughout the tsarist empire – in order to overthrow the tsarist empire.

Unwittingly comrade Calderbank places himself in the camp of Joseph Pilsudski and his Polish Socialist Party. Formed in 1892, it adopted a national socialist programme for the reconstitution of an independent Poland – which had been all but partitioned out of existence at the 1815 Congress of Vienna between the the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Rosa Luxemburg and Julian Marchlewski split with the PSP in 1893 over this perspective. Objective conditions, they rightly said, demanded the unity of workers – Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Letts, etc – against the tsarist empire.

In defence of the past – in particular in defence of the welfare state and the post-World War II social democratic consensus – comrade Calderbank presents a programme that would at best weaken the EU. It would, however, also weaken the European working class movement if its strongest detachments forced upon their capitalists a policy of withdrawal – a road that would lead not to a national socialist paradise, but the hell of increased national exploitation and eventually counterrevolution.

Marxists do not look back fondly to the post-war social democratic settlement. No, our programme emphasises the positive advantages of the workers being organised into the largest, most centralised states. All the better to overthrow them and begin the advance to a communist society and the inspiring principle, ‘From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs’.

The working class can only but suffer one cruel defeat after another if it confines itself to the politics of defence. We in Labour Party Marxists therefore raise the perspective of the politics of the offensive. Hence we say, to the extent that the EU becomes a superstate, so must the advanced part of the working class organise itself into a single, pan- European party in order to overthrow it.
The EU is undoubtedly a reactionary anti-working class institution. Amongst consenting Marxists that hardly needs proving with statistics concerning spending limits and welfare cuts. The real question is what attitude we adopt towards it. LPM stands for extreme democracy under capitalism. Concretely that means fighting for the levelling up of wages, substantive equality for women, the abolition of the council of ministers, a parliament with full powers and an armed working class.

Without such an approach, talk of socialism in Britain or a socialist Europe is nothing but a fraud.

Notes

1. The Daily Telegraph January 31 2014.
2. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331759/UKIP- set-European-poll-success-powers-ahead-Tories- Labour.html.
3 The Daily Telegraph November 27 2013.
4. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 5, Moscow 1976, p49. 5. LRC Resolutions booklet November 2011, p11.
6. See Marx’s The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and The civil war in France (1871). Also there is Kautsky’s Parliamentarism, direct legislation and social democracy (1893).
7. Labour Briefing February 2014.
8. Labour Briefing February 2014.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Trade unions

Rearm working class with collective representation

Gallery

We need to do more than defend the union link as it exists, argues Paul Demarty

As can be seen from the Collins review, the trade union role in the Labour Party is not about to disappear. Of course, down the line there may be another change, and another, until finally union influence over Labour is quietly extinguished.

There are some on the left who eagerly anticipate this eventuality, stupidly imagining that the logical result will be for the unions to bring financial muscle and prestige to whatever no-hope pet project a given group happens to have (leaving aside those ultra-leftists who consider such matters irrelevant in any case). Of the rest – those who understand that the dissolution of the union link would be a historic defeat for the British working class, taking it from a faint shadow of political representation to no representation whatsoever – not a few, naturally, are to be found in the ranks of the Labour Party.

Last November’s AGM of the Labour Representation Committee voted to support the utterly ineffective Defend the Link campaign. Naturally the vote was uncontroversial. Labour Party Marxists, however, moved a second motion urging the LRC to go further and commit itself to transforming the link, overturning the legal right of individual union members to opt out of paying the political levy, and fighting more generally against state interference in the internal affairs of the workers’ movement. This motion, unfortunately, proved very controversial. For the record, Graham Bash, LRC treasurer, abstained and Pete Firmin, its political secretary, voted against. However, the LPM motion was comfortably defeated.

Right to scab

Behind this superficially tactical difference are two matters of principle. The first ought to be the most straightforward for any advocate of working class political action – the principle of binding collective action.

It was, in fact, put quite nicely at the LRC AGM by comrade Gary Heather, Islington North CLP, who criticised the individualism of “liberal philosophy” – this was based on an elitist notion that the masses should not get involved in politics. Attacks on the Labour-union link, comrade Heather correctly noted, are in fact attacks on the principle of mass political action, which for capitalist ideology amounts to mob rule.

More sharply still was it put by Trotsky, sarcastically commenting on Tory encroachments on the political levy shortly before the 1926 general strike. Union funding for Labour, even then, was what we would today call a ‘political football’; a decision by the law lords in 1909 (the infamous Osborne judgment) ruled that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) – an ancestor to today’s Rail, Maritime and Transport union – was ultra vires in providing financial support on the part of its members t o the Labour Party. This ruling was overturned in 1913 by the Asquith government, but the right of workers to opt out was enshrined in law.

“The crux of the matter is, of course, that the workers’ organisations, by asserting their anti-Liberal, ‘despotic’, Bolshevik right of enforced collection of the political levy, are in effect fighting for the real and concrete, and not a metaphysical possibility of parliamentary representation for the workers; while the Conservatives and the Liberals, in upholding the principles of ‘personal freedom’, are in fact striving to disarm the workers materially, and thereby shackle them to the bourgeois parties,” Trotsky further writes.

“It is sufficient merely to take a look at the division of roles: the trade unions are for the unconditional right to the enforced collection of the political levy; the House of Exhumed Lords is for the unconditional banning of such extortion in the name of sacred personal freedom; finally the House of Commons forces a concession from the trade unions, which amounts in practice to a 10% refund [the number of workers who opted out – PD] to the principles of Liberalism.”1

From this perspective, it is quite clear: the ‘opt-out’ rule is just as much a violation of the principle of collective political action as Miliband’s ‘opt-in’ wheeze. Moreover, it is plainly the case that such encroachments strike at the very heart of working class politics. The bourgeoisie has the means of production, the repressive apparatus of the state, legions of paid persuaders and all manner of other means at its disposal with which to fight its corner. The working class, in the final analysis, has sheer weight of numbers on its side.

If those numbers are coordinated into conscious collective action, then no amount of yellow-press hacks, cops and slick politicians will save their bosses. Which is why the ‘other side’ are so very keen to make that more difficult. The right to opt out of the union political fund is the right to scab. So it has been since the days of the Osborne judgment.

It is depressing to see comrades on the Labour left shrinking from this perspective, given how utterly dependent their political projects are on the maintenance of the party’s link with organised labour. At the LRC AGM, where the argument was not the philistine one – that arguing for a better, more democratic union link was somehow incompatible with effective resistance to attempts to weaken or break that link – it was laughably timid.

One comrade suggested that getting rid of opting out would lead to a split in the union movement, because people would leave in disgust at handing money over to Labour (or whoever it happened to be). This was the argument of the scab Osborne himself! It completely internalises the degraded model of contemporary trade unionism as a sort of legal services provider to embattled individuals – or at best, ‘traditional’ apolitical unionism (which renders a political fund entirely redundant anyway).

If enforcing compliance with the political fund will cause a split in the union, the union is already split – just as much as a union needs to tackle old-fashioned blacklegs, it needs to enforce united political action. You do not accept the liberal (or even Tory!) prejudices of some union members as immutable. You destroy those prejudices. You win them over. That is the tradition of the working class movement – not liberal timidity.

Their law

The other serious aspect to this question is more insidious: the question of legal and state interference in the affairs of the workers’ movement as a whole.
It is a matter posed very well by the historic case of the Osborne judgment, although such interference is as old as workers’ organisations themselves. The argument of the law lords was that the ASRS was “a lawful society at common law”, and as such subject to legal restrictions on the demands it was entitled to put on its members. The jargon of the legal profession conceals what is from the point of view of any democrat a flagrant absurdity. The ASRS never asked to be a ‘lawful society’; its freedom of association is rendered moot by a decision of the courts which serves only to place arbitrary restrictions on its activity.

A more recent case exemplifies this problem even more sharply. Viva Palestina, George Galloway’s aid-to-Gaza initiative, never sought registration with the Charity Commission – but nevertheless, the latter unilaterally declared it to be a charity, and on that basis immediately sequestered its funds for breaking regulations pertaining to support for political causes!

Freedom of association is not a freebie that comes with bourgeois society. The “liberal philosophy” referred to by Gary Heather abhors the collective action of the masses for good reason, and seeks to undermine it at every turn. Allowing the bourgeois state to set the limits of working class organisation is a sure way to defeat; the judicialisation of industrial relations has closely tracked the deepening weakness of organised labour, and this is not a coincidence.

Astonishingly, even this aspect of the LPM motion was opposed by some. We were told that opposing state interference in union affairs was anti-working class – because, after all, we want unions to be subject to the minimum wage and health and safety legislation! Comrades, if you go down that road, we can all kiss goodbye to the pittance that is the minimum wage and patchy workplace protections altogether – because only effective working class action, in trade unions and ‘high’ politics, can get even such crumbs as those, and imagining somehow that bourgeois law is neutral in affairs of the class struggle is the surest way yet invented to disarm the class.

Notes

1. www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/britain/wibg/ ch07.htm.

Trade unions

Reject the Collins review

Gallery

Transforming the Labour Party remains a strategic necessity. Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Party Marxists, makes the case for genuine democracy

Talk about the demise of the Labour Party’s trade union link is greatly exaggerated. Those on the left who stand aloof from the party because its leadership is rightwing, or campaign for trade unions to disaffiliate, are running away from the fight for socialist politics within Labour and merely leaving the right in control. The deficiencies in the party are as old as the party itself

Lord Sainsbury’s Blairite protégés promoted by the Progress organisation will be disappointed that their political careers will continue to be tainted by association with the collective decision-making so essential to working class democracy. Stephen Bush, a “contributing editor to Progress”, describes the link as “a relationship that should never have started in the first place” and writes of “the party founders’ historic error in building a relationship with trade unions and not trade unionists”.1

Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party in England and Wales – the ex-Militant Tendency majority who ran away from the fight to win the Labour Party to socialism – is unable to sustain its self-serving line that Labour has already been transformed into a purely bourgeois party, just because they are out of it. Labour’s death as any kind of workers’ party is now postponed for a further five years: “… if implemented, the Collins review will mean the destruction of the last remnants of the trade unions’ organised presence within the Labour Party … this will conclude the already advanced transformation of Labour into one more party of big business.”2 So the struggle in the party is not over? A pity you have given up the ghost, comrades.

After implementation of the Collins proposals, the unions will retain their 12 NEC seats and their 50% share of conference votes. Labour will remain a “bourgeois workers’ party” (Lenin’s famous description) – a product of the workers’ movement, but dominated by parliamentary leaders with pro-capitalist politics. Its bourgeois pole is dominant and its working class pole is subordinate, but that is nothing new. The trade union bureaucrats can sometimes prevent changes that do not suit them, but it is the Parliamentary Labour Party which rules, and the ‘leader’ who rules the PLP – and that is nothing new either. The PLP can safely ignore conference decisions – but that anti- democratic Labour ‘principle’ was formally endorsed as long ago as the 1907 party conference.

The proposed ‘democratisation’ of the party will leave the MPs, not the party, choosing candidates for leader and deputy leader, before the rest of us get to vote for a candidate not of our choice – again that is nothing new. The extensive patronage powers of the party leader to give away jobs is not mentioned by Collins, so the Führerprinzip will continue its corrupting influence: MPs’ loyalty goes to the leader, not the party – once more nothing new.

In short, there was no golden age of ‘real Labour’. Labourism was hobbled by capitalist politics from the beginning – Liberal Party politics, to be precise – along with a trade union movement dominated by a self-serving, privileged bureaucracy.3 However, this unfortunate situation is not inevitable.

The fight to democratise and rebuild our unions and our party, and transform them into effective instruments of working class struggle, is inseparable from the fight to win the active support of the working class majority for the socialist political programme. Without this, capitalism cannot be superseded positively. Those who claim that the party cannot possibly be transformed might just as well argue that those other mass organisations produced by our class, the trade unions, cannot be transformed, or that the working class cannot be won for socialism.

The party has been saddled with rightwing, pro-capitalist leaders, whether trade union bureaucrats or professional, careerist politicians, since the foundation of the original Labour Representation Committee in 1900. But there is no good reason why this must be so. It is certainly not because the right wing has such a good political programme for our class. Every Labour government to date has demoralised and weakened the workers’ movement and paved the way for the return of a Tory administration.

It is not that the Labour right deserves to win, but the Labour left deserves to lose – so long as it prioritises short-term vote-winning and the return of a Labour government above the long-term struggle to win active majority support for working class socialism. Yes, we need to elect socialist MPs, to act as tribunes of the people, as the voice of those in struggle. But we need an Ed Miliband government attempting to establish a “responsible capitalism” like a hole in the head.

If and when the left becomes strong in the party, the capitalist media can be relied upon to pull out all the stops to make Labour ’unelectable’, and the careerists of the Labour right can be expected to jump ship, as they did in the 1980s. Good riddance! Better still, we should drive out the pro-capitalist politicians as class enemies within our movement, starting with those who collaborate with the present Tory-led coalition government.

Socialist strategy towards Labour should not be entryism, seeking to split the left away at an opportune moment. That would leave the party in the hands of the right. No, our aim must be to win the party for working class liberation, for socialist politics, for Marxism, and kick out the pro- capitalist right. Rebuilding and re-educating our movement and our class from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe, not in servile loyalty to ‘our’ capitalist government.

Rubber stamp

Lord Ray Collins’s final report, endorsed by Labour’s national executive committee on February 4, will be rubber-stamped by the March 1 two-hour special ‘conference’ with the backing of delegates representing the three largest affiliated unions: Unite, GMB and Unison.4 No amendments will be allowed. Only one vote will be taken: ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between top trade union bureaucrats, on one side, and Ed Miliband and his apparatchiks and would-be capitalist ministers, on the other, reportedly described by an unnamed shadow cabinet member as a “rollercoaster”, have predictably produced a rotten compromise which reflects the present balance of forces.5 The outcome leaves the trade union link intact, but weakened, and is correctly characterised by Socialist Appeal – the ex-Militant Tendency minority who opted to stay in the party – as a mere “rejigging of internal party procedures”.6

Nevertheless, the Collins proposals, Ed Miliband claims, are “the biggest changes to who can become involved in the Labour Party since probably its formation”.7 So what are these changes?

Firstly, the three-part electoral college for leader and deputy leader elections – one third each for CLPs, affiliates and PLP – is abolished, so that only individuals can vote, and all votes count equally, whether cast by an MP, a party member, an affiliated supporter or a registered supporter (see below). No longer will some individuals have multiple votes – one as a party member, another as a trade union levy-payer, a third as a member of an affiliated socialist society, for example. But this desperate attempt to appease the rightwing press and appear democratic comes with an old formula. The PLP gets to choose the candidates. So the ‘one member, one vote’ election in the party is preceded by MPs voting to select a short list of candidates.

In the few days before the February 4 NEC meeting, the threshold percentage of MPs required to get nominated was knocked down by the trade union side from Collins’s original 25% to 20% – which Miliband announced in his January 31 Guardian interview – and then to the 15% endorsed by the NEC. So some hard bargaining took place. But it produced a rotten compromise, which leaves the PLP in effective charge of the party – a far cry from the democracy we need.

Secondly, when the five-year transition period is complete, affiliation fees will only be accepted by the party from individual levy- payers who have opted in. At present, all affiliated levy-payers get a vote in party leader and deputy leader elections. From the end of 2014, onlythose levy-payers will be eligible to vote who have chosen to become “affiliated supporters” (at no extra cost), confirmed their allegiance to (unspecified) “Labour values” and linked up with a local party organisation in a constituency where they are on the electoral register. Those who “opt in” but do not become affiliated supporters will be disenfranchised.

Alongside the full party member and the affiliated supporter, there will be a new, or rather an amended, category of “registered supporter”. They too must affirm their “Labour values”, appear on the electoral register and be linked to their local CLP. They have no other rights than voting in a leader and deputy leader election, and in a “closed primary”, should one be organised. Leader elections may be few and far between, and the only closed primary planned so far is to select Labour’s candidate for London mayor in 2015. If I read Collins correctly, registered supporters must sign up afresh and pay a £3 admin fee each time they wish to get a vote in a party election. Whether his ‘bait’ of occasional voting rights will draw new blood towards the party, as Miliband hopes, remains very doubtful. The previous category of “supporters”, who paid no fee, but were promised voting rights if their number rose to 50,000, only reached 20,000 and has now been junked.

Miliband had told The Guardian that he “would look at the structure of conference in the future”, but the offending words about reviewing the number of trade union NEC seats and the percentage of conference vote had been removed from the final document.7
Unite is linking its regional political committees and political activists with the largest workplace branches to encourage its members to tick the necessary boxes to become affiliated supporters and move on from that to full party membership. The current Labour membership is about 186,000, equal to no more than 13% of Unite’s.

All this means that if trade unionists get busy, affiliated supporters and new recruits could transform the largely hollowed out Constituency Labour Parties and help swing the party radically to the left.

Notes

1. ‘Harry Potter and the question of party reform’, February 4: www.progressonline.org. uk/2014/02/04/harry-potter-and-the-question-of- party-reform.
2. www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/797/18123.
3. Keir Hardie’s 1892 election manifesto, when he was elected to the Commons for the first time as MP for South West Ham, declared: “I have all my life given an independent support to the Liberal Party … I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.”
4. http://s.bsd.net/labouruk/default/page/file/ a84a677f479406989c_pom6b5w60.pdf.
5. The Guardian February 4.
6. Socialist Appeal February 5.
7. Interview in The Guardian January 31.

Trade unions

Labour: Everything to play for

Gallery

The fight for the soul of the Labour Party has only just begun. Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the Collins review

Trade union influence: still there but weakened

Expectations of the demise of the Labour Party’s trade union link are greatly exaggerated. Those on the left who stand aloof from the party because its leadership is rightwing, or campaign for trade unions to disaffiliate, are running away from the fight for socialist politics in the party and merely leaving the right in control. The deficiencies in the party are as old as the party itself.

Lord Sainsbury’s Blairite protégés promoted by the Progress organisation will be disappointed that their political careers will continue to be tainted by association with the collective decision-making so essential to working class democracy. Stephen Bush, a “contributing editor to Progress”, describes the link as “a relationship that should never have started in the first place” and writes of “the party founders’ historic error in building a relationship with trade unions and not trade unionists”.

Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party in England and Wales – the ex-Militant Tendency majority who ran away from the fight to win the Labour Party to socialism – is unable to sustain its self-serving line that Labour has already been transformed into a purely bourgeois party, just because they are out of it. Labour’s death as any kind of workers’ party is now postponed for a further five years: “… if implemented, the Collins review will mean the destruction of the last remnants of the trade unions’ organised presence within the Labour Party … this will conclude the already advanced transformation of Labour into one more party of big business.”2 So the struggle in the party is not over? A pity you have given up the ghost, comrades.

After implementation of the Collins proposals, the unions will retain their 12 NEC seats and their 50% share of conference votes. Labour will remain a “bourgeois workers’ party” (Lenin’s famous description) – a product of the workers’ movement, but dominated by parliamentary leaders with pro-capitalist politics. Its bourgeois pole is dominant and its working class pole is subordinate, but that is nothing new. The trade union bureaucrats can sometimes prevent changes that do not suit them, but it is the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) which rules, and the ‘leader’ who rules the PLP – and that is nothing new either. The PLP can safely ignore conference decisions – but that anti-democratic Labour ‘principle’ was formally endorsed as long ago as the 1907 party conference.

The proposed ‘democratisation’ of the party will leave the MPs, not the party, choosing the candidates for leader and deputy leader, before the rest of us get to vote for a candidate not of our choice – again that is nothing new. The extensive patronage powers of the party leader to give away jobs is not mentioned by Collins, so the Führerprinzip will continue its corrupting influence: MPs’ loyalty goes to the leader, not the party – once more nothing new.

In short, there was no golden age of ‘real Labour’. Labourism was hobbled by capitalist politics from the beginning – Liberal Party politics, to be precise3 – along with a trade union movement dominated by a self-serving, privileged bureaucracy. However, this unfortunate situation is not inevitable.

The fight to democratise and rebuild our unions and our party, and transform them into effective instruments of working class struggle, is inseparable from the fight to win the active support of the working class majority for the socialist political programme. Without this, capitalism cannot be superseded positively. Those who claim that the party cannot possibly be transformed might just as well argue that those other mass organisations produced by our class, the trade unions, cannot be transformed, or that the working class cannot be won for socialism.

The party has been saddled with rightwing, pro-capitalist leaders, whether trade union bureaucrats or professional careerist politicians, since the foundation of the original Labour Representation Committee in 1900. But there is no good reason why this must be so. It is certainly not because the right wing has such a good political programme for our class. Every Labour government to date has demoralised and weakened the workers’ movement and paved the way for the return of a Tory government.

It is not that the Labour right deserves to win, but the Labour left deserves to lose – so long as it prioritises short-term vote-winning and the return of a Labour government above the long-term struggle to win active majority support for working class socialism. Yes, we need to elect socialist MPs, to act as tribunes of the people, as the voice of those in struggle. But we need an Ed Miliband government attempting to establish a “responsible capitalism” like a hole in the head.

If and when the left becomes strong in the party, the capitalist media can be relied upon to pull out all the stops to make Labour ’unelectable’, and the careerists of the Labour right can be expected to jump ship, as they did in the 1980s. Good riddance! Better still, we should drive out the pro-capitalist politicians as class enemies within our movement, starting with those who collaborate with the present Tory-led coalition government.

Socialist strategy towards Labour should not be entryism, seeking to split the left away at an opportune moment. That would leave the party in the hands of the right. No, our aim must be to win the party for working class liberation, for socialist politics, for Marxism, and kick out the pro-capitalist right. Rebuilding and re-educating our movement and our class from its present politically weak condition must be done in opposition to a capitalist government of any stripe, not in servile loyalty to ‘our’ capitalist government.

Collins

Lord Ray Collins’s final report,4 endorsed by Labour’s national executive committee on February 4, will be rubber-stamped by the party’s March 1 two-hour special ‘conference’ with the backing of delegates representing the three largest affiliated unions: Unite, GMB and Unison. No amendments will be allowed. Only one vote will be taken: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The annual conferences, with their potential for rank-and-file rebellion, have been successfully by-passed.

Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between trade union bureaucrats, on one side, and Ed Miliband and his apparatchiks and would-be capitalist ministers, on the other, reportedly described by an unnamed shadow cabinet member as a “rollercoaster”,5 have predictably produced a rotten compromise which reflects the present balance of forces in the party. The outcome leaves the trade union link intact, but weakened, and is correctly characterised by Socialist Appeal – the ex-Militant Tendency minority who opted to stay in the party – as a mere “rejigging of internal party procedures”.6

Nevertheless, the Collins proposals, Ed Miliband claims, are “the biggest changes to who can become involved in the Labour Party since probably its formation.7 So what are these changes?

Firstly, the three-part electoral college for leader and deputy leader elections – one third each for CLPs, affiliates and PLP – is abolished, so that only individuals can vote, and all votes count equally, whether cast by an MP, a party member, an affiliated supporter or a registered supporter (see below). No longer will some individuals have multiple votes – one as a party member, another as a trade union levy-payer, a third as a member of an affiliated socialist society, for example. But this much vaunted ‘democratisation’ is marred by the fact that the PLP gets to choose the candidates. So the Omov election in the party is preceded by MPs voting to select a short list of candidates.

In the few days before the February 4 NEC meeting, the threshold percentage of MPs required to get nominated was knocked down by the trade union side from Collins’s original 25% to 20% – which Miliband announced in his January 31 Guardian interview – and then to the 15% endorsed by the NEC. So some hard bargaining took place. But it produced a rotten compromise, which leaves the PLP in charge of the party – a far cry from the democracy we need.

Secondly, when the five-year transition period is complete, affiliation fees will only be accepted by the party from individual levy-payers who have opted into affiliation. At present, all affiliated levy-payers get a vote in party leader and deputy leader elections. From the end of 2014, only those levy-payers will be eligible to vote who have chosen to become “affiliated supporters” (at no extra cost), confirmed their allegiance to (unspecified) “Labour values” and linked up with a local party organisation in a constituency where they are on the electoral register. Those who “opt in” to the affiliated levy but do not bother to become affiliated supporters will be disenfranchised.

Alongside the full party member and the affiliated supporter, there will be a new, or rather an amended, category of “registered supporter”. They too must affirm their “Labour values”, appear on the electoral register and be linked to their local CLP. They have no other rights than voting in a leader and deputy leader election, and in a “closed primary”, should one be organised. Leader elections may be few and far between, and the only closed primary planned so far is to select Labour’s candidate for London mayor in 2015. If I read Collins correctly, registered supporters must sign up afresh and pay a £3 admin fee each time they wish to get a vote in a party election. Whether his ‘bait’ of occasional voting rights will draw new blood towards the party, as Miliband hopes, remains very doubtful. The previous category of “supporters”, who paid no fee, but were promised voting rights if their number rose to 50,000, only reached 20,000 and has now been junked.

Only two NEC members, Christine Shawcroft and Dennis Skinner, voted against the Collins report on February 4, and one of the six Unite delegates, Martin Meyer, abstained. Afterwards, on February 13, the Unite executive council met and endorsed the proposals. Miliband had told The Guardian that he “would look at the structure of conference in the future”, but the offending words about reviewing the number of trade union NEC seats and the percentage of conference vote had been removed from the final document.

Unite is linking its regional political committees and political activists with the largest workplace branches to encourage its members to tick the necessary boxes to become affiliated supporters and move on from that to full party membership. The current Labour Party membership is about 186,000, equal to about 13% of Unite members alone.

All this means that if trade unionists get busy, affiliated supporters and new recruits could substantially outnumber existing party members, demolishing the argument that the union share of conference votes and NEC seats should be reduced. So take courage, comrades: the fight is not over. We have everything to play for.

Notes

1. ‘Harry Potter and the question of party reform’, February 4: www.progressonline.org.uk/2014/02/04/harry-potter-and-the-question-of-party-reform. 2. www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/797/18123. 3. Keir Hardie’s 1892 election manifesto, when he was elected to the Commons for the first time as MP for South West Ham, declared: “I have all my life given an independent support to the Liberal Party … I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.” 4.http://s.bsd.net/labouruk/default/page/file/a84a677f479406989c_pom6b5w60.pdf. 5. The Guardian February 4. 6. Socialist Appeal February 5. 7. Interview in The Guardian January 31.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Labour: Democracy versus patronage

Gallery

The stench of leader loyalty hangs over the Collins proposals to ‘mend’ Labour’s trade union link, writes Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists

Lord Collins’s proposals, to be put before delegates to Labour’s March 1 special conference, will not end the party’s trade union link, as the Blairite Progress faction would like, but they are the thin end of the wedge, and should be rejected outright. They have nothing to do with transforming Labour into a genuine party of the working class, for socialism rather than the illusion of ‘responsible capitalism’.

Where we need to break the domination of the union and party bureaucracy over the workers’ movement, Collins’s proposals are a rotten compromise made behind our backs – leaving the bureaucracies in control. Effective defence of the link requires a thoroughgoing democratisation and politicisation of both party and unions, and a fight to win all trade unions and all socialist organisations to affiliate to the party, making Labour a permanent united front of the whole class.

Although, under the proposals, trade unions at present affiliated will retain their 12 guaranteed seats on the national executive committee and their 50% vote at conference, as insisted upon by Unite in its December submission to Collins, the five-year transition to ‘opting in’ will do its work of culling the affiliated membership (and affiliation fees), setting the scene for a further undermining of the collective political input of trade unionists.

The proposal is that, from the end of 2014, new union members who wish to have part of their union dues paid to the party will have to opt in, rather than being automatically affiliated with the right to opt out. Existing Labour Link members will have to opt in within five years if they wish to continue paying the political levy to Labour. Then, those affiliated members who wish to participate in Labour Party matters can choose to be “associate members” of the party, and get to vote in party leader and deputy leader elections, among other things. Levy payers who do not choose to become associate party members will lose their present right to vote. Significantly, the party will have direct contact with the associate members, not via their trade union as at present.

According to Jon Lansman, proposals “seen as the basis for … agreement between Ed Miliband and the trade unions” were circulated for discussion by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. The CLPD proposals involved “Meeting Ed Miliband’s aspiration” to impose individual opting in to affiliated membership, and “Meeting trade union aspirations for a continuing collective voice in the affairs of the party they founded, and sustainable levels of voting and representation.”1However a February 3 blog comment by CLPD secretary Peter Willsman clearly condemns the opting in system:

“In 1927, as a vindictive response to the General Strike, the Tories brought in opting in, in order to weaken the Labour Party and undermine the influence within the LP of the organised working class. In 1946 the Labour government repealed this anti-working class legislation. The Tories have always wanted to bring it back and, no doubt, so have many in the misnomer organisation which calls itself ‘Progress’. Sadly, what is being proposed is closer to the Tories in 1927 than Labour in 1946. CLPD will be sending a critique to CLPs, with suggestions (to be sent to Ed) that would make the proposals less of a gift for ‘Progress’. But, if the sham ‘consultation’ is anything to go by, Ed has a tin ear.”2

In my view, the right to opt out of the union’s political fund is a legally imposed right to scab, which should be overthrown, along with all anti-trade union laws.

The whole process of the Collins review has been an insult to democracy, to rank-and-file party members and trade unionists, and to the NEC. After 13 years of tolerating the packing of constituency selection meetings by Progress, a shadowy rightwing organisation heavily funded by Lord Sainsbury, Ed Miliband used the Tory media frenzy over Unite’s mobilisation of trade unionists in Falkirk to announce his project to refashion the party – without first consulting the NEC, which had to play catch-up. Then, instead of submitting concrete proposals to annual conference, the “spring conference” was announced to pre-date and circumvent the annual autumn trade union conferences, removing their opportunity to debate the proposals and submit their own alternatives.

Collins, in his “interim report”, then invited submissions along the lines of ‘How do you think we can fulfil Ed’s vision?’, up to the Christmas Eve deadline, after which he could cherry-pick the suggestions he (or Miliband) prefers. Party organisations and affiliates met for collective discussion, but with no concrete proposals before them which they could amend. When the Collins report was finally circulated to the NEC immediately before its February 4 meeting, it did not even contain a summary of the content of the submissions. What did the party tell Collins? We do not know.

So why don’t NEC members speak out against this travesty of democracy? Jon Lansman explains:

“If you follow LabourList, you will have seen in recent days arguments from front-benchers on right and left who are privately unhappy about key aspects of the Collins proposals as to why you should nevertheless back them. Be not persuaded by the arguments ritually presented by those who depend on the patronage of the leader! This is not free expression! This is merely a requirement of their position.”3

So there is another item for the CLPD to tack on to its list of demands aimed at democratising the party: Abolish the post of leader, and let us apply some republican democracy to the party: eg, all officials electable and recallable; all officials on a skilled worker’s wage.

Notes

1. ‘Labour’s reshuffle – and what it means for party reform’ Left FuturesOctober 8: www.leftfu­tures.org/2013/10/labours-reshuffle-and-what-it-means-for-party-reform.

2. ‘Seven reasons to be wary of the Collins pro­posals’ Left FuturesFebruary 3: www.leftfutures.org/2014/02/seven-reasons-to-be-wary-of-the-collins-proposals. 

3. Ibid.