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.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Class unity requires left unity

Gallery

Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists looks at Andrew Murray’s rejection of the new LU party

Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband: next Labour government will not advance class struggle
Among the left strategies considered by the CPGB’s Mike Macnair shortly before Left Unity’s founding conference was “Fordism”, named after Michael Ford’s polemic on Left Unity’s website arguing for socialists to work patiently in the Labour Party rather than form a new party outside Labour.

Comrade Macnair wrote:

“Michael Ford” – a pseudonym for a “senior figure in the labour and trade union movement” – has written a critique of the Left Unity project in a two-part article, ‘Left Unity’s modest flutter’, available on LU’s website. The author is pretty clearly (from the content of the article) an ‘official communist’, and widely rumoured to be a Morning Star/Communist Party of Britain supporter who holds an appointed position in a trade union headquarters.

The article in effect lays out the working orientation of the Morning Star/CPB, which is held much more widely among Labour and trade union left officials than the formal size of the CPB would make it appear. The project is essentially of moving Labour slightly to the left, through alliance with ‘official lefts’ in the unions and the parliamentary Labour Party. At the same time, the Ford article also displays, in passing comments, that lurking within this is a ‘party concept’ of the sect type shared by the SWP.1

‘Michael Ford’ was indeed a pseudonym understandably adopted temporarily by the CPB’s Andrew Murray to avoid bringing down even more opprobrium on the Unite union, his employer. Comrade Murray came out publicly as the author on November 27 in a House of Commons committee room.

The meeting, chaired by John McDonnell MP, was organised by Red Pepper magazine under the title ‘Ralph Miliband and the politics of class’ – for the dual purpose of launching the 50th edition of the annualSocialist Register, subtitled ‘Registering class’2 and commemorating the political life of the socialist and Marxist father of the present leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition. Needless to say, neither ‘red Ed’ nor his brother, David, showed any interest in the meeting. Their father, Ralph Miliband (1924-94), was a founding editor of Socialist Register, along with John Saville (1916-2009).

In a footnote to his Socialist Register contribution, ‘Left unity or class unity? – working class politics in Britain’, comrade Murray explained how the article began life as Michael Ford’s ‘Left Unity’s modest flutter’:

This essay has evolved out of a polemic written against the ‘Left Unity’ project in Britain in spring 2013. The original text was published at http://21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com and it was republished, to its credit, by Left Unity itself at www.leftunity.org. The original was published pseudonymously in order to avoid the union, Unite, which I serve as chief of staff, being dragged into any public controversy on the issue at the time. At the time of writing (July 2013) the plan appeared to be to convert Left Unity into a new Left Party as of November 2013.3

While Ford’s polemic has “evolved” into Murray’s essay, his basic positions stand. Left Unity, he says, “fails to seriously address the issue of the Labour Party and working class support for it; ignores the failure of previous new left parties and indeed the real state of the contemporary left … and draws a causal connection between economic crisis and socialist politics which is at best questionable.” All sound criticisms, in my view, of the wishful thinkers of the Left Party Platform majority and leadership of Left Unity, who imagine they can win mass working class allegiance by challenging New Labour with old Labour politics, and tackle capitalism without winning the working class majority to Marxism.

Failures

Murray’s strategy of “reconstituting the working class”, in contrast, runs through building and channelling resistance to “the Tory-Liberal coalition’s policies of social misery” into yet another ‘next Labour government’ – ‘ignoring the failure of previous Labour governments’, to paraphrase Murray’s criticism of LU. As I pointed out at the November 27 meeting, the workers’ movement needs a Miliband Labour government managing capitalism like it needs a hole in the head.

Such a government would demoralise and demobilise our movement and, as before, lead back to an even more rightwing Tory government. Yes, we need socialists in parliament, but as tribunes of the people’s struggles, not as administrators of capitalism’s austerity. There is no concrete reason why the Labour Party cannot be won to socialist politics and the anti-working class, pro-capitalism right wing driven out. No doubt they will split anyway if the left gains ground – as they did before to form the Social Democratic Party in 1981, which went on to merge with the Liberals. The struggle to reconstitute the working class must be carried on in opposition to capitalist governments of any stripe, not in support of the wars and austerity programmes of our rulers, until our class is strong enough to take over.

Interestingly, Murray himself is extremely doubtful about the possible benefits of a Labour administration: “No-one … can confidently assert that it is likely that a 2015 Labour government will master the economic crisis in the interests of ordinary people …” But he very tentatively expresses false hopes that it might inadvertently aid the reconstitution of the working class: “… such a government could certainly generate – even in spite of itself – an arena of struggle over its direction which could bring benefits in itself in terms of strengthening the movement, and could create circumstances for the working class to recover a measure of confidence.” I am sorry to remind readers that there is no evidence for such a pipe dream.

Murray is also doubtful as to whether the fight to win the party for working class interests can be won. “It is certainly possible that the working class movement will learn through experience, over the next few years (and probably not much longer either way), that the struggle to ‘reclaim Labour’ is not going to work.” Perhaps the working class will fail to develop sufficient “‘social weight’ to sustain its own political project”, in which case socialists must “redouble their efforts” and, after “a definite period of unchallenged bourgeois political domination”, a “new mass socialist party, resting on a serious and durable foundation” may eventually be built. Or perhaps, on the other hand, “the effort will be thwarted by establishment manoeuvres, with what has been termed the ‘Blairite undead’, supported by a frightened elite, obstructing democratic and constitutional efforts to transform Labour which might have otherwise succeeded. … Under those circumstances, the creation of a new class party might be higher up the agenda.”

Worryingly, Murray’s hedging of bets corresponds to similar mixed messages from trade union bureaucrats Len McCluskey (Unite) and Paul Kenny (GMB), who have threatened to disaffiliate or limit trade union funding of the party if Labour’s front bench does not modify its policies from neoliberal austerity to Keynesian capitalism. Whatever Murray’s subjective wishes, such disaffiliation is more likely to depoliticise the working class than form the basis of a new socialist party. And support made conditional on minor modifications to party policy is the opposite of the extreme democracy the working class needs in order to rebuild its own movement and master society.

Murray quite correctly underlines that, although trade unions “cannot be the agency for establishing socialism”, nevertheless they are “the essential arena for reconstituting the working class, which is the only such agency”. But he puts forward no proposals for democratising the unions, for asserting rank-and-file control of the leadership, just as he says nothing about democratising the Labour Party. In the unions, he argues for the “overdue development of purposeful leadership” and “above all the re-emergence of … self-reliant, politically oriented activists at all levels”. Quite right. But these attributes are a by-product of the fight for the independent politics of the working class – instead of tailing pro-capitalist political careerists – and for democratisation of our organisations: freedom of discussion; election and recallability of officials; and a worker’s wage for our full-time representatives, so they are in it to serve, not to dominate.

The newly formed Left Unity party (LU’s founding conference was on November 30, after publication of Murray’s essay in Socialist Register 2014), Murray argues, “risks being an impediment to socialists actually making the most of present opportunities for working class reconstruction and advance” – meaning, of course, “the People’s Assembly movement, uniting unions and community campaigns against poverty and welfare cuts … alongside trade unions willing to fight back in the workplace”. Although he charges LU with the sin of prioritising “a chimerical ‘left unity’ over class unity”, it is actually Murray, not LU, who is posing one against the other. Unity of the left is, self-evidently, one of the essential conditions for the reconstitution of the class. Not bureaucratic unity, in which minorities are silenced, but democratic unity – freedom of discussion, unity in action – in which minority views are heard, differences understood and lessons learned.

New ‘vanguard’

For Marxists, it is axiomatic that theory and practice go together. In Murray’s case, unfortunately, theory is accommodating to practice, at least with respect to the party question. As a member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and a self-described Stalinist, one might expect him to proclaim the unique leading role of the ‘official communist’ party to which he belongs. Instead he offers us a new concept: a “vanguard of a new type”, consisting of the three forces “united in the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition”, and now the People’s Assembly – namely his own CPB, Counterfire and Socialist Action, plus “the Labour left being additionally central”.

These are “all from different 20th-century traditions”. Their unity is “one not presupposing total ideological homogeneity – or even the ‘party’ in the sense which Marx and Engels used the term in 1848”:

These socialists do not agree, or even attempt to agree, about everything, have discrete organisational affiliations and do not subject themselves to a discipline more severe than respect for commonly arrived at decisions and comradely loyalty. The objective is unity for purposeful intervention on the key issues of the time – anti-imperialism, opposing the social calamity of austerity economics – and for building rooted movements for change, re-establishing the basis for mass socialist politics, while tolerating diversity of opinion about … the long-term prospects of the Labour Party.

So, to lead the working class struggle, instead of ‘left unity’ meaning democratic unity in a mass workers’ party organised around Marxist political programme to supersede world capitalism, Murray has lowered his sights to a much more limited horizon – a small group of sects coming to a bureaucratic consensus in order to lead “movements for change” on “key issues of the time”. And whoever dissents from the agreed consensus of these ‘leaders’ is obviously being divisive. Eg, Ken Loach’s “notably sectarian intervention” at the People’s Assembly. To turn the PA into an anti- Labour movement, Murray writes, “is a route to undermining its potential as an instrument of the necessary class reconstruction which can be the only underpinning of any advance”. So much for “tolerating diversity of opinion”!

The central aim of transforming the Labour Party into “an instrument for working class advance and international socialism” can only be achieved if the trade unions on which the party is based are also transformed, and this will require “the closest unity of the left inside and outside the party”.4 If the new Left Unity party is serious about overcoming capitalism, it will have to join the struggle to transform Labour. Similarly, if the Labour Representation Committee is serious about its constitutional aim of encouraging “all socialists outside the Labour Party … to join or rejoin the Labour Party”, it will have to take seriously, and encourage, all genuine steps towards left unity outside Labour as well as inside.

Notes

1. ‘Left Unity’s contradictory aspirations’ Weekly Worker supplement, November 28 2013. The original two-part Michael Ford article is athttp:// leftunity.org/left-unitys-modest-flutter; and http://leftunity.org/left-unitys-modest-flutter-2.

2. L Panitch, G Albo and V Chibber (eds) Socialist Register 2014Monthly Review Press.

3. Socialist Register 2014 p286. Murray helpfully gives a number of references to relevant articles in previous editions of Socialist Register: Ken Coates’s ‘Socialists and the Labour Party’ (1973); Ralph Miliband’s ‘Moving on’ (1976); Duncan Hallas’s ‘How can we move on?’ (1977); Leo Panitch’s ‘Socialists and the Labour Party: a reap­praisal’ (1979).

4. www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk/aims.

The left

LRC: Surviving, but still shrinking

Gallery

Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee

There were slightly more than 100 comrades attending the November 23 annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee in London’s Conway Hall. That is down by a third compared with last year. Bad news for what is an umbrella organisation of the pro-Labour Party left, but surely reflective of the general state of the left in Britain.

Ed Miliband is “inching to the left”, with his promises to freeze energy prices and repeal the bedroom tax, and his successful blocking of so-called liberal military intervention in Syria. And though this has undoubtedly increased Labour’s poll ratings and made the election of a Labour government in May 2015 seem credible, it has not resulted in any increased organisational strength of the Labour left, which continues to shrink.

There have been particular problems with the LRC. Both joint national secretaries elected in November 2013, Andrew Fisher and Pete Firmin, resigned their positions a few months later. National organiser, Lizzie Woods, resigned from the organisation after a row at the April national committee. A meeting which has never been authoritatively reported. Her replacement, Ben Sellers, lasted only a couple of months before he followed suit, resigning from the LRC to join Red Labour.

Perhaps that is why the AGM was not presented with an annual report from the national committee or financial and membership reports either. Earlier in the year, individual paid-up membership was reported as about a thousand, but it should be remembered that the LRC also has significant organisational affiliates, including six national trade unions (Aslef, BFAWU, CWU, FBU, NUM and RMT), numerous trade union branches and regions, constituency and branch Labour Parties, Welsh Labour Grassroots, Campaign for Socialism (Scotland), and a variety of communist and socialist organisations.

The merger between LRC and Labour Briefing in 2012, making Briefing the journal of the LRC, has so far produced remarkably little change in the publication. The editorial board, of which I have been a coopted member for the past year, has so far declined to carry a report of each national committee meeting, on the spurious grounds that such a report would be “boring”. Consequently it is difficult for LRC members and Briefing readers to take ownership of the project, being ill-informed about the state of the organisation and of the discussions and decisions taking place on the national committee.

Apart from a couple of articles encouraging local branch-building by Ben Sellers as national organiser before he resigned, and the consistent campaigning of Sussex LRC, there has been little information about the hoped-for mushrooming of local LRC branches. The LRC remains primarily an annual conference and a national committee.

The officer problem which caused such a crisis in 2013 has been ostensibly resolved by dividing the tasks of the previous secretary post between four elected officers: political secretary, membership secretary, web manager and administrator. This has enabled Pete Firmin, who resigned mid-term as national secretary because the workload was too much for one person, to accept the post of political secretary.

As I have argued at NC meetings (they are normally open for all LRC members to attend), while sharing out the work is sensible and necessary, the organisation remains vulnerable to crisis when one or more of its annually elected officers chooses to resign mid-term, whether through personal circumstances or political change of heart. A better, more flexible solution would be to have officers elected by the national committee, making them accountable to it and easily replaceable at any time. Instead of having posts prescribed by the constitution and rules, tasks should be allocated flexibly as circumstances change. So far this rational, democratic solution has been rejected.

Moving the national committee statement entitled ‘Alternatives to austerity. Defend the welfare state. Defend the union link’, LRC chair John McDonnell MP argued that “we must build campaigns to make issues safe for the Labour Party to campaign on. They will only do that when they see there are votes involved,” he said. In an oblique reference to the failure of the Socialist Alliance, the hopeless ‘old Labour’ projects of Respect, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and No2EU, and the confusion of Left Unity, which holds its founding conference this Saturday, he regretted that “no left alternative” has emerged. “People are still voting Labour,” he said. “We must nourish struggles within the party by building struggles outside.”

Two activists from the Boycott Welfare campaign, Clive and Robert, gave a moving contribution from the platform as guest speakers. Unemployed people and benefit claimants are clearly being badly maltreated by the system. Half a million have been already denied benefits under the workfare system, they reported.

The other platform speakers were the columnist Owen Jones and Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services union. Comrade Jones gave us his usual fare: rousing condemnation of the iniquities of the Tory-Lib Dem government and the promise that the left is winning the argument when it comes to public opinion. As for comrade Serwotka, he would not waste time repeating “how bad it is”. We need to talk about “what we’re going to do about it”. He noted that all the mainstream parties agree on the politics of austerity. “A Labour government in 2015 on its current outlook will be useless,” he said. Nevertheless “it does matter who wins”. Alongside coordinated industrial action, we need coordinated political action. “We need to discuss how to build a movement that can pressure the Labour Party and shift British politics massively to the left. Either Labour will be forced left or we will sweep them aside.”

This raises the necessity of PCS affiliation to Labour. Why should we have to “pressure” Labour, as if from outside, in order to shift the politics of our own party? Why not simply exercise our democratic rights within it? Instead of “sweeping Labour aside”, why not sweep the pro-capitalism, anti-working class, pro-austerity right wing out of our party?

Guest speaker Philippe Marlière of the Front de Gauche (Left Front) described how Nicolas Sarkozy, the “French Thatcher”, was “stopped by the voters” after 12 months, only to have the Socialist Party’s François Hollande break all his promises and continue austerity. He alerted us to the transatlantic trade agreement about to be signed between the EU and the US which, in the name of growth, will actually mean a massive loss of workers’ rights and ecological safeguards.

Jeremy Corbyn MP tilted at the illusions of those who have a rosy picture of Labour’s 1945 government. Its record was contradictory, he said. Alongside its undoubted social achievements, its foreign policy included not only the independence of India, but also the partition. It participated in the formation of Nato, and in 1949 Clement Attlee secretly authorised the spending of £200 million on nuclear weapons without consulting parliament.

Motions

Perhaps the most important issue confronting the LRC is the threat by Miliband to weaken the link between the Labour Party and affiliated trade unions. And conference heard Andrew Berry from Unison, Maria Exall of the CWU and Ian Hudson of the bakers’ union (BFAWU) robustly defending collective decision-making. Yet motion 5 from Labour Party Marxists, which sought “the end of individual ‘opting out’ of trade union political funds”, was voted down by a two-thirds majority. Sadly that majority included the LRC’s political secretary Pete Firmin, though Graham Bash, the de facto editor of Briefing, abstained. Those opposing us offered a variety of spurious reasons why collective decision-making and solidarity should not apply in the workers’ movement when it comes to politics. Eg, individual rights need to be respected, that or we endanger the precious unity of Britain’s trade union movement. A combination of nonsense and being in thrall to the status quo.

Moving the motion, I pointed out that a deal was being hatched behind the scenes between the bureaucracies of the party and of the trade union movement. A deal that would be rubber-stamped at the March 1 special conference. This view was underlined when Walter Wolfgang informed us that the special conference is programmed to last only two hours.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s motion 13, ‘Internationalist campaign in the European elections’, was, surprisingly, the only motion to which amendments were moved. This was the first conference at which amendments were permitted and incorporated into the pre-conference timetable, following a rule change proposed by Communist Students at the 2012 AGM.

Two amendments were moved, including the one from Labour Party Marxists. Moved by Patrick Smith of Hull LRC, this sought to carry out what had been decided in 2011, but not implemented: ie, “to initiate a short statement setting out our position and circulate it around Britain and Europe for signatures”. It also called for the LRC to channel its resources, during the coming EU election campaign, into organising “as much support as practicable for Labour candidates supporting our statement”. This should be done in preference to illogically advocating a blanket Labour vote when most Labour candidates will surely be following a version of British nationalist politics, arguing how “Britain’s interests” can best be served within the EU.

The internationalist policy adopted by the LRC conference in 2011 was sound. Motion 15, ‘Against British nationalism – for a workers’ united Europe’, stated: “That demanding withdrawal from the EU, or opposing British entry into the European single currency, is a British nationalist position which misidentifies the enemy as ‘Europe’ rather than the ruling class. This is not altered by tacking on a slogan like ‘Socialist United States of Europe’.”

In 2013, however, the Brent and Harrow LRC amendment was carried, deleting clause two of the motion: “That advocating withdrawal from the EU or anything like that undermines this fight [against British nationalism]. Britain withdrawing from Europe would not benefit workers in Britain and would almost certainly boost nationalism.” The successful amendment leaves the rest of the motion intact, but adds the promise of “an extensive debate” in the event of an in-out referendum. Jam tomorrow.

Working class internationalism favours maximum working class unity, the maximum merging of peoples, except only where temporary separation is necessary in order to restore trust. British withdrawal from the EU, or the withdrawal of any EU state, carries the reactionary logic of separate development and ‘national interests’ in place of common class interests.

The LRC is facing backwards on Europe, despite its pious declarations “to oppose British nationalism”, for a “Socialist United Europe”, a “European constituent assembly” and a “European workers’ government” – all proclaimed in the same motion, alongside this latest refusal to recognise that advocating withdrawal means nationalism.

Trade unions

Labour Party Marxists: Open letter to Jerry Hicks

Gallery

Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Party Marxists, calls for an end to begging and bullying in return for crumbs

Dear comrade

As someone who supported your 2013 election campaign to become general secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union and biggest affiliate to the Labour Party, I am writing to offer some comradely criticism. Specifically I urge you to reconsider your negative attitude towards the Labour Party.

Your approach differs only in degree from Len McCluskey. Earlier this year he said that if Labour did not serve the interests and hopes of the working class the unions might have to find another way. This position may sound strong – threatening to withdraw vital union funding in order to get our way. But actually it reveals a weak, subservient, slavish mentality, which to all intents and purposes accepts that the rightwing, pro-capitalist, careerist politicians will always remain in control. We should not be aiming to bully or beg them into conceding a few crumbs, but winning control away from them.

Hence LPM’s strategic aim of transforming the party into a permanent united front of the whole of the workers’ movement. We seek to transform Labour into an organisation which includes all trade unions, socialist groups and pro-working class partisans. Something which, for us, goes hand in hand with winning the working class to the Marxist programme of human liberation.

At a time when the fight is on to defend the Labour-trade union link your comment that Unite should stop “infiltration through recruiting members to the Labour Party” dovetails perfectly with Tory media misinformation.1 As if trade unions are external to the Labour Party. Of course, Unite came about through a merger of constituent unions such as the engineers’ and transport workers’ unions which were founding affiliates of the original Labour Representation Committee back in 1900.

You say: “Unite should end immediately its disastrous ‘reclaim Labour’” policy. But the only thing wrong with this aim of ‘reclaiming’ is the illusion that the Labour Party ever had socialist politics. The Labour Party has always been led by reactionary politicians who are committed body and soul to capitalism. Even when ‘clause four socialism’ was adopted in 1918, this was never more than a sop to satisfy an increasingly militant working class.

From the beginning, Fabian leaders like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, campaigned for independent working class political organisation (ie, independent of the Liberal and Tory parties) in order to put working class representatives in parliament. But they did not develop independent working class politics. The first Labour MPs, mostly trade unionists, went into parliament with the same politics as the Lib-Lab MPs before them. And these professional politicians – the Parliamentary Labour Party – quickly became the dominant section of the party, politically independent of conference, albeit held in check on occasion by the trade union bureaucrats who traditionally provided most of the funds.

Your October 24 press release complains about “Labour being given members’ money hand over fist and unconditionally”, despite which “The man Unite gave £10,000s to become Labour leader, Ed Miliband, treated them with complete and utter contempt.” In a similar vein, during the Unite election campaign, interviewed by the Bristol Post, you said: “I think we should stop giving the Labour Party money if they are not going to support our principles in their policies. We should keep our members’ hard-earned money tightly in our grasp, and use that to negotiate with the party – we should only give the party money as a reward, because giving it as an incentive doesn’t work.”2

Of course, the union is free to decide how to spend its money, and whether or not to affiliate to Labour. But affiliation is about much more than money, and the debate about the Labour-trade union link should not be primarily about funding. Affiliation, like individual membership, carries rights – the right to play a part in collective decision-making, the right to democratically determine policies and practices.

With all its faults, the Labour Party is just as much a part of the workers’ movement as the trade unions which created it over 100 years ago. The struggle for trade union democracy and the struggle for Labour Party democracy are in fact one and the same. The fight for working class politics (ie, Marxism) in the trade unions and the fight for working class politics in the party are inseparable from the task of winning the majority of the working class to class-consciousness and active involvement in organised political struggle.

Your September 9 complaint against Unite to the certification officer about the union’s general secretary ballot magnifies possible irregularities out of all proportion, and adds grist to the mill of the Tory and media witch-hunt targeting McCluskey and (ex-) Grangemouth convenor Stevie Deans, as if they are ballot-riggers in the Labour Party and ballot-riggers in the union. They are nothing of the kind. Unite activist Charlie Pottins got it right:

“Since the election for general secretary was supervised by the Electoral Reform Society, there is surely no suggestion that one of McCluskey’s minions was caught stuffing ballot boxes? If not, what we are left with is a technical irregularity, and it [ie, Jerry Hicks’s complaint – SK] reminds me of the kind of objection we have seen the employers and their lawyers coming up with to challenge strike ballots.”3

The aim of the Tory witch-hunt, of course, is to denigrate effective trade unionism in general and the Labour-trade union link in particular. All part of a desperate attempt to undermine Labour’s electoral support and boost Tory chances of staying in office beyond May 7 2015.

As you know, the Labour Representation Committee and its journal, Labour Briefing, declined to take sides between you and McCluskey. But Labour Party Marxists (an LRC affiliate) supported your campaign. That despite your attitude to the Labour Party. We stand with you all the way on the need for rank-and-file organisation and militant action to fight austerity, closures and job cuts, and confronting the anti-trade union laws which make effective solidarity illegal.

What clearly distinguishes you from McCluskey is your anti-bureaucracy, anti-careerist proposals: “The election of all officials, elected by members, not appointed by an individual or a panel … For a general secretary to live the life of the members they represent, on an average member’s wage, not a six-figure salary.”4 But militancy in defence of workers’ rights, wages and conditions – or militancy to make fresh gains, for that matter – is not enough. Any gains made can only be temporary, so long as the capitalist system of wage labour, of exploitation and oppression, remains. I am sure you agree.

Our class needs its own independent politics – not just to fight for concessions within the system, but to supersede it positively by replacing capitalist class (minority) rule with working class (majority) rule in transition to a classless society. We urge you to drop your equivocal attitude to the Labour Party, and commit wholeheartedly to the struggle to transform it into “an instrument for working class advance and international socialism”.5

Notes

1. October 24 2013 press release: www.jerryhicks4gs.org/2013/10/pressrelease-press-release-press.html.

2. www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-s-Jerry-Hicks-faces-biggest-job-interview.

3. randompottins.blogspot.co.uk.

4. jerryhicks4gs.org/p/i-stand-for.html.

5. LPM ‘Aims and principles’.

Europe, Labour structures and programme

LPM: European Union: Bring arguments out into the open

Gallery

Amendments changing existing LRC policy in the name of further discussion are disingenuous, argues James Marshall

Opposition to the European Union continues to motivate, embarrass and vex rightwing bourgeois politicians. The present situation is easy to summarise. Under severe pressure from the UK Independence Party, David Cameron has committed the Tories to an in-out referendum following the next general election in 2015. If returned to No10, he, therefore, solemnly pledges to negotiate a root-and-branch reform of Britain’s relationship with Brussels. Yet we all know, whatever the outcome, he will inevitably advocate a ‘stay in’ position.

Smelling blood, Nigel Farage is eager to turn the May 2014 European parliament election into a referendum against Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, Brussels corruption and continued EU membership. And, worryingly, when it comes to reported voting intentions, an Open Europe poll puts Ukip on 27% – significantly ahead of Labour (23%) and the Tories (21%).1 Farage also has money, and in large amounts, behind him. Paul Sykes, one of Britain’s richest men, has pledged “whatever it takes” to ensure a Ukip triumph.2

Meanwhile, the swelling anti-EU mood gives rise to further manoeuvre and division within Conservative ranks. Adam Afriyie – tipped by some as a future Tory leader – has been clamouring for a referendum this side of the general election.3 True, this earned him a stinging rebuke from Tory grandees. But Afriyie remains defiant … and a recent Salvation poll showed 55% supporting his stance.4

Disgracefully, not a few in the labour movement have aligned themselves with the xenophobic right. Among the Labour MPs who signed up to the People’s Pledge – a cross-party (now semi-defunct) campaign calling for an EU referendum – are Ronnie Campbell, Rosie Cooper, David Crausby, Jon Cruddas, John Cryer, Natascha Engel, Jim Fitzpatrick, Roger Godsiff, Tom Harris, Kate Hoey, Lindsay Hoyle, Kelvin Hopkins, George Howarth, Iain McKenzie, Austin Mitchell, Graham Stringer, Gerry Sutcliffe, Derek Twigg and Keith Vaz. Brian Denny, a red-brown partisan of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, sits on its national council, as does Mark Seddon, former editor of Tribune. Other council members include Tory MPs Zac Goldsmith and Douglas Carswell, Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader), Marta Andreasen (Ukip MEP till February 2013, when she defected to the Tories), Jenny Jones (Green Party) and Jim Sillars (SNP deputy leader 1990-92). Bob Crow, Boris Johnson, Caroline Lucas and Bill Greenshields (CPB chair) are prominently listed as supporters.

The foul nature of the People’s Pledge can surely be gathered from the protest it staged outside the treasury on July 21 2011 – the day the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank ‘troika’ launched its second, £96 billion, Greek bailout. The campaign insisted that there should be no further contributions from Britain. Bob Crow in particular singled out article 122 of the Lisbon treaty, which “obliges” British taxpayers to “risk” billions of pounds at a “time of cuts to public services at home”.5 Presumably Greece should have been abandoned to a disorderly default and forced to exit from the euro zone.

For its part, the British National Party roundly condemns international bankers for “strangling the Greek economy”, demands that the UK “withdraw from the European Union” and wants to reserve government funds for “more useful projects”.6 Sadly, a position which almost passes for common sense on the left nowadays too. Both the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party in England and Wales are set to partner the Morning Star’s CPB in the No2EU electoral bloc.7 According to a current No2EU bulletin, a break with the EU will allow Britain to “be rebuilt with socialist policies.”8 A clear case of national socialism. And, unfortunately, where the CPB, SWP and SPEW have led, Socialist Resistance, Respect, the Alliance for Green Socialism, Socialist Labour Party, Solidarity, etc have followed.

What appears to be an incongruous, puzzling and unnatural alignment between left and right in actual fact stems from a common source. Uniting 28 countries, having an agreed legal framework, committed to the free movement of labour and capital, the EU stands as an existential threat to the nation-state cherished by those for whom the future lies in the past. After all, BNPers yearn for a white, 1950s Britain with traditional weights and measures and close trading relations with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In an eerily similar way, the nation-state is viewed as the natural vehicle for socialist transformation by left reformists, ‘official communists’ and former Trotskyites alike. The dream is of a referendum which in due course will see a return to Keynesianism, welfarism and British “national sovereignty”.9

As an aside, it is worth noting the deep distrust Marxists have generally had for 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 we 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 condone foreign adventures.10 The wording of the 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 Adolf Hitler. He managed to get a 90% mandate for his dictatorship on August 19 1934 – despite a vicious campaign of intimidation, there were millions of spoilt ballot papers.

Disapprove

Against this dire background the position of the Labour Representation Committee stands out positively. The November 2011 AGM agreed resolution 15, which reads as follows:

LRC believes:

1. That the Europe-wide capitalist crisis requires a Europe-wide working class response.

2. That we should no more oppose European capitalist integration than we would oppose the merger of two companies, even though the bosses use mergers as an excuse to attempt job cuts and other attacks. When Britain plc merges into Europe plc, the answer is to link up with other European workers in solidarity and struggle.

3. That demanding withdrawal from the EU, or opposing British entry into the European single currency, is a British nationalist position which misidentifies the enemy as ‘Europe’ rather than the ruling class. This is not altered by tacking on a slogan like ‘Socialist United States of Europe’.

4. The road to a socialist united Europe is the road of responding to European capitalist unification by organising for cross-European workers’ and socialist struggle. We advocate the following programme for this struggle:

  •  Oppose all cuts; level up wages, services, pensions and workers’ rights to the best across Europe;
  •  Tax the rich and expropriate the banks, Europe-wide;
  •  Scrap the EU’s bureaucratic structures; for a European constituent assembly;
  •  Against a European defence force; for a Europe without standing armies or nuclear weapons;
  •  For a European workers’ government.

5. In a referendum on British entry to the euro, our position will be to advocate an active abstention and our slogans will be along the lines of ‘In or out, the fight goes on’; ‘Single currency – not at our expense’; and ‘For a workers’ Europe’.

The resolution concludes with a three-point commitment:

1. To organise public meetings and debates about Europe across the country.

2. To initiate a short statement setting out this position and circulate it around Britain and Europe for signatories.

3. To produce a short pamphlet setting out this position.11

Given that the resolution originated with and was moved by the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, it was perhaps surprising that the AGM voted in favour. But, thankfully, it did. True, there are some problems with it. Eg, a European workers’ government is perfectly fine as a programmatic position, but is a sad joke when it comes to immediate agitation. At present there is no serious revolutionary Marxist partyanywhere in Europe. Nevertheless, the resolution was eminently supportable and it was good to see it gain a clear majority.

That said, LRC leaders such as Graham Bash, Andrew Fisher and Mike Phipps obviously disapproved of the resolution … and, as far as I am aware, the concluding three-point commitment remains unfulfilled. Of course, this may well be due to the decline and disorganisation of the LRC over the last couple of years. Anyway, a May 2014 Euro election dominated by Ukip and British nationalism certainly needs the input of the LRC and other leftwing organisations willing to challenge British nationalism and spread the message of pan-EU working class unity, democracy and socialism.

Seriously

With the May 24 elections a mere six months away, the AWL has presented this year’s LRC national conference with another resolution on Europe (resolution 13). The 2011 policy, the growth of Ukip and the rerun of No2EU are noted. Ditto those “advocating” a withdrawal from the EU are criticised because it “undermines” the fight for class unity and boosts nationalism.

Admittedly, the conclusion is questionable. The AWL calls for a “campaign advocating a Labour vote” on the basis of opposing cuts, supporting the levelling up of wages across Europe, striving for the pan-European organisation of the working class, scrapping the EU’s bureaucratic structures, etc. Slogans such as ‘For international working class solidarity – for a workers’ united Europe’ are recommended.

Frankly, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Ed Miliband and his candidates for 2014 will hardly be officially standing on the principles of internationalism and the perspective of a European workers’ government. Nor will they oppose all cuts or advocate a European constituent assembly. Labour candidates will be standing on a Labourite version of British nationalism barely distinguishable from that of the Tories and the Lib Dems. In the revealing words of deputy leader Harriet Harman, the “top priority” of Labour MEPs will be to “make sure they get the best deal” and “bring jobs and growth here in the UK”.12

However, that does not rule out voting Labour – and most LRC affiliates and individual members are firmly within the auto-Labour fold. But surely the LRC should use the May 24 elections as an opportunity to make propaganda for its agreed vision of a Europe ruled by the working class. Instead of running a campaign “advocating” a blanket Labour vote, the LRC should single out and “organise as much support as practicable for Labour candidates supporting our statement” (Labour Party Marxists amendment to resolution 13).

However, there are two other amendments to resolution 13. Politically they are identical. The first, from Brent and Harrow LRC, proposes: “In the event of an in-out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, to hold an extensive debate across the whole of the LRC movement on what position to take.” In the same spirit Islington LRC says: “Should there be a referendum on withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union in the future, it is likely the Conservatives and the right wing will focus on attacking positive social reform and workers’ rights. It will be difficult for an argument against a fortress and capitalist EU to get heard. LRC should further discuss its position, should a referendum be called at a future date.”

Frankly, both amendments are disingenuous. What the comrades really want, at least in my opinion, is that the LRC should join with the xenophobic right, and reformist left, under the banner of the nationalist withdrawal campaign. However, lacking the courage to debate this out at the November 23 AGM, we see them resort to the dishonest tactics of obfuscation and delay.

Setting aside time to explore our differences is, of course, an excellent idea. However, let us be honest, the LRC is more than prone to mimic the pinched discussion and debate permitted by the labour and trade union bureaucracy (and the bureaucratic centralist sects). Endless speeches by invited guests, long reports by officers … and three-minute contributions from the atomised affiliates and individual members. That, regrettably, is standard fare for the LRC.

Surely, our AGM should see a full discussion and debate. So, extend the allotted slot for resolution 13 and the three amendments. Give priority to discussion and debate here and now. The LRC can, after all, both confirm existing policy and organise a special conference in the event of a future government naming the date for an in-out referendum.

If the AGM is to be treated seriously, and it ought to be, then comrades from Brent and Harrow LRC and Islington LRC should have enough time to fully, honestly and openly tell us what they think. That would be good. However, attempts to overturn existing policy by what is a sleight of hand must be opposed.

Notes

1. Daily Mail May 28 2013.

2. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24983159.

3. The Daily Telegraph October 12 2013.

4. Mail on Sunday October 13 2013.

5. http://communist-party.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1377:article-9-demonstration-no-bail-out-without-a-referendum&catid=78:eu-a-popular-sovereignty&Itemid=91.

6. www.bnp.org.uk/policies/foreign-affairs.

7. www.socialistparty.org.uk/campaign/Election_campaigns/no2eu/17420.

8. www.tuaeuc.org/no2eu-wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/a5_no2eu.pdf.

9. www.tuaeuc.org/no2eu-wp/?page_id=474.

10. See Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and The civil war in France (1871). Also there is Kautsky’s book, Parliamentarism, direct legislation and social democracy (1893).

11. Resolutions booklet November 2011, p11.

12. www.labour.org.uk/labour-party-european-election-candidate-selection-results,2013-08-02.

Labour structures and programme

Defending status quo is a loser

Gallery

Ken Williamson looks at Ed Miliband’s attack on trade union influence

Ed Miliband told the Trades Union Congress to “show courage” by backing his proposals to further downgrade the role of affiliated trade unions.1 But ‘courage’, like ‘difficult decisions’, are the words of praise heaped on Labour leaders when they attack the working class in the ‘national interests’ of capitalism.

Throughout the 13 years of New Labour governments, Progress, a shadowy organisation heavily funded by Lord Sainsbury, packed the selection meetings of Constituency Labour Parties, with never a murmur of protest from the Murdoch press or the Tories – or Labour HQ. Now the Parliamentary Labour Party has barely a genuine trade unionist in sight.

Was Miliband “panicked under ferocious Tory fire” into a knee-jerk response to the manufactured Falkirk ‘scandal’, as Mark Seddon, chair of the Defend the Link campaign, claims?2 It seems unlikely. No, Miliband used Falkirk as an opportunity to announce long-held plans to reduce trade union influence. The Collins review was deliberately timed to pre-empt input from union annual conferences.

At Labour’s September 2013 annual conference, Harriet Harman opened the ‘debate’ on Lord Ray Collins’ interim report. “You could not have anyone better than Ray,” she told us, “to listen to everyone’s views and to draw them together.” And there in a nutshell, is the hollowness of Labour Party ‘democracy’ today. You get to express your views, as in an employer’s suggestion box. Those above “listen”, so you are supposed to feel grateful and wanted. Then they cherry-pick the ideas they want, and tell you it’s what you have collectively chosen.

Lord Collins stressed how proud he was to be a trade unionist and told us not to worry – he would “retain the constitutional collective voice of the unions”. Ed wants to “mend the link, not end the link”, he said, but it has to change, so it becomes “open and transparent”.

The interim report covers more than the union link. It sets out ‘what Ed wants’ in a renewed relationship with the unions, in which, Ray assures us, collective affiliation will not be touched; the development of standardised constituency development plans (more central control?); primaries, starting with the London mayor contest; and “fairness and transparency” in the selection of candidates. Each section of the report has a series of questions along the lines of ‘How shall we fulfil Ed’s idea?’ Everything will be settled at the special conference on March 1.

Miliband’s attack on collective affiliation, by requiring individuals to ‘opt in’ in place of the right to ‘opt out’, is couched in the beguiling language of liberal individualism: “I want to make each and every affiliated trade union member a real part of their local party, making a real choice to be part of our party, so they can have a real voice in it,” he told the TUC. By making those who ‘opt in’ to the affiliated political levy full party members, Miliband hopes to raise Labour’s individual membership from around 200,000 to more than 500,000.

Collective decision-making and unity in action – ie, solidarity – is the key to working class strength, in political struggles just as much as in the battles with employers. Those of us campaigning in our unions and in the party to defend the link should take note what an easy target the status quo makes. See how Miliband was able to denigrate the existing arrangements when he spoke to the TUC: “Some people ask: what’s wrong with the current system? Let me tell them: we have three million working men and women affiliated to our party. But the vast majority play no role in our party. They are affiliated in name only”.3 It has to be said, of course, that this is also true of the vast majority of individual Labour Party members. Only a small percentage play an active role in the party, and even then the activists do much more canvassing than decision-making.

So we have to have the “courage to change” – but not in the way Miliband proposes, liquidating collective political decision-making in our trade unions (‘united we stand’) in favour of individual choice (‘divided we fall’). On the contrary, we must rebuild our collective strength. Not dismantle it. We must revitalise the trade unions by thoroughly democratising them: officials at all levels must be paid the average wage of their members, and be elected from below, not bureaucratically appointed from above. We must bring the Rail, Maritime and Transport union and Fire Brigades Union back into the party, win the Public and Commercial Services union to affiliate, bring all trade unions and all socialist and working class organisations into the party, and transform Labour into a permanent united front of the whole working class.

With this perspective, we must obviously reject Miliband’s ‘opting in’ proposal, but also overturn the existing ‘opting out’ system. As Hazel Nolan of London Young Labour told the September 3 launch meeting of the Defend the Link campaign, “When you buy a bottle of coke, you can’t opt out of paying the tax on it. Why should you be able to opt out of paying your share of your union’s democratically agreed political spending?” 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.

At the same meeting the Communication Workers Union’s Maria Exall struck the right note, combating the idea that the campaign should merely defend the status quo and postpone political disagreements until this latest attack on the link had been defeated, or that criticism of union leaders who might support the campaign should be muted. “There is a problem within the trade unions – the bureaucracy. How come we still have anti-union laws? The unions let New Labour through,” she said.

Trade union input into the party must not be left in the hands of overpaid trade union bosses like Len McCluskey of Unite, Paul Kenny of GMB and Dave Prentis of Unison.

A deal is being worked out behind closed doors to modify the link – a compromise designed to leave intact and unaccountable both the dominant Parliamentary Labour Party and party bureaucracy, on the one hand, and the trade union bureaucracy which finances it, on the other. The compromise deal has been or is being settled behind the backs of the rank and file, who will nevertheless be asked to endorse the deal at the March 1 special party conference.

In Miliband’s October shadow cabinet reshuffle, the three senior figures closely associated with Tony Blair – Jim Murphy, Liam Byrne and Stephen Twigg – were demoted in what has been dubbed the “cull of Blairites” (but left MP Dianne Abbott was ditched too, presumably for premature opposition to a military attack on Syria).

According to Atul Hatwal on the Labour Uncut website, the appointment of Jon Trickett as ‘deputy chair’ to lead on party reform tells us that Miliband is not going to appeal “over the heads of union leaders to the rank and file”, but “wants to do a deal with the union bosses”.4 The “reform pill” which the unions must swallow if Miliband is not to lose face is “the requirement for trade union levy-payers to opt in to paying some of their political levy towards Labour”.

In exchange, “the union block vote at conference will remain, the unions will retain a separate electoral college in the leadership election and the union reservation of 12 places out of 33 on the NEC (compared to six places reserved for CLP members) will stay”, plus “an extension and entrenchment of the electoral college at CLP level”, justified by “parallel management and voting structures”.

Jon Lansman admits that this kind of rotten compromise was circulated for discussion months ago by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy “as the basis for just such an agreement between Ed Miliband and the trade unions”.5 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.”

This manoeuvre, politely described as “delinking the collective representation of trade unions in the structures of the party from the involvement of individual trade unionists in the life of the party” may be a happy compromise between entrenched bureaucrats, parliamentary and trade union, who function as masters, rather than servants, of our labour movement. However, it leaves both bureaucracies as unaccountable as before, and sets up collective working class political decision-making for further erosion.

In 1909, the Tory Law Lords tried to snuff out the emerging independent political organisation of the workers’ movement with the notorious Osborne judgement, after which affiliated trade unions were prevented from funding the Labour Party for four years, until Herbert Asquith’s minority Liberal government legalised trade union political funds. But the 1913 Trade Union Act also imposed the condition that individual members could opt out of the union’s political fund – the thin end of the wedge of legally backed political scabbing.

Stanley Baldwin’s Tories drove the wedge deeper into a defeated working class after the 1926 General Strike. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 imposed opting in. Many hard-up trade unionists stopped paying, and the party’s finances and campaigning capacity suffered – but, more importantly, the working class culture of solidarity, of collective decision-making, was further undermined. This was reversed by Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1946, and the legally imposed right to opt out of the union’s political fund was retained by John Major’s Tory government in section 82 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

Now, as ‘Red Ed’ tries to put the clock back to 1927, defending the hollowed out democracy of the status quo is a losing strategy.

Notes

1. ‘No Miliband apology over Falkirk vote row – Harman’: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23999869.

2. ‘The battle for Labour’s soul’ Morning Star September 9.

3. Full speech at www.labour.org.uk/speech-by-ed-miliband-to-the-tuc.

4. October 8, www.labour-uncut.co.uk.

5. ‘Labour’s reshuffle – and what it means for party reform’, October 8, www.leftfutures.org.

 

Refound Labour as a permanent united front of the working class

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