The Labour Party and the unions

As Ed Milliband gets heckled at the TUC conference John McAllion takes a look at the value for trade unionists of the link with Labour

John McAllion Posted by on September 16, 2011. Filed under John McAllion,Opinion. Posted with the tags:,
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The Labour Party and the unions

UNISON delegates vote for strike action to defend pensions

Ernie Bevin, one-time general secretary of the T&G union and right wing Labour politician, used to argue that the Labour Party had grown” out of the bowels of the Trades Union Congress”.

Keir Hardie, a founder member of the Party, often referred to the “Great Alliance” between the unions and the Labour Party. Even the great Bolshevik leader Lenin described the Labour Party as “mostly made up of trade unions”.

At the time when they made these remarks all three were undoubtedly right. For much of the last century, trade unions and the Labour Party formed the most important relationship on the Left of British politics.

Millions of union members across the island came to see Labour as their natural political home. In the 1951 general election nearly 14million workers voted for Labour. It was then and remains now the highest vote ever recorded by Labour.

Since that electoral high point, Labour’s working class vote has been in steady decline.

As the Party swung rightwards in an attempt to woo centrist voters, its links to the unions were gradually weakened.

By the time of the last election, the Party polled just over 9.5million votes. Indeed, by then, the Tories were easily outpolling Labour (40 to 28) among skilled workers. Workers in their millions were no longer identifying with Labour. The “Great Alliance” had run on to the rocks.

Yet today’s trade unions remain the main financial backers of the Labour Party. During the first 3 months of Ed Miliband’s leadership, the trade unions coughed up more than £2million or 88 per cent of all funding for the Party’s coffers.

Trade union members are deserting Labour in their millions. Trade union bosses, however, continue to spend union money on keeping the Labour Party in business as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

It is difficult to understand why they continue to do so.

Within a month of Miliband’s leadership victory, the TUC backed private member’s bill to remove legal barriers to industrial action was lost in the Commons because Labour could not muster the 100 MPs required to ensure its survival.

171 Labour MPs, including the leader and his entire shadow cabinet, simply stayed away. They were as determined as the Tories and the Liberals to keep British unions in legal shackles.

When Labour’s Lord Hutton published his report attacking public sector workers’ pension rights, Labour spokespeople welcomed it as a “sound basis” for further reform.

When the unions began a fight-back against the Coalition’s proposals to make workers work longer and pay more for poorer pensions, Miliband denounced their strikes as “wrong” and accused them of letting the British public down.

As hundreds of thousands of union members sacrificed wages to take to the streets. Labour’s Tessa Jowell appeared on breakfast television to reassure the British public that a Labour Government would also cap pensions and make workers work longer.

Labour, she emphasised, was on the side of the public whose services were being disrupted. Labour was not on the side of the striking workers.

Meanwhile, Miliband having secured the leadership on the back of union votes, announced plans to cut the unions’ voting strength at Labour Party conference.

Where Blair had ditched Clause 4 to detach Labour from socialist ideology, he now plans to rewrite the party’s constitution to break what remains of trade union influence inside the Party.

Labour in future will be a party of communities. Its days as the parliamentary wing of organised labour are now consigned to the dustbin of history.

To make sure the unions were getting the message, Miliband then turned up at this year’s Trades Union Congress to reiterate his and his party’s opposition to the unions’ strategy of co-ordinated industrial action and civil disobedience in defence of pensions and public services.

He refused to commit a future Labour Government to reversing the 15 per cent cut in pensions caused by switching from RPI to CPI in annual uprating. He refused to back the restoration of trade union rights enjoyed across the rest of Europe.

He defended academy and free schools against state schools. He even defended the role of the private sector in the rail industry. He also lectured the unions about their lack of relevance in the private sector where only 15 per cent of workers were unionised.

In short, he used the Congress to send an anti-union message to the non-union majority of voters in the country.

Labour may depend for its survival on the unions’ money. It may even depend on union members to provide it with an activist base. But it has no intention of giving the unions anything back in return.

Labour, like the Coalition Government, can be relied upon to keep the unions under control and subject to the harshest anti­union laws on the continent of Europe.

Miliband was deservedly heckled by the Congress. He and his Party undeservedly continue to receive financial and material support from the very unions that he publicly rebukes and humiliates.

He was accused of being out of touch with union sentiment. In truth he was deliberately out of touch. The unions have become both Labour’s financial lifeline and Labour’s political punch-bag.

Union members already understand that. They are no longer fooled. Its time for the union leadership to stop fooling itself.