Defend the union link

If the report in Today’s edition of the Guardian (click here
to read it) is to be believed it seems that the Labour leadership has
decided to ignore any of the good stuff which may have come out of the
Refounding Labour consultation exercise and instead dig up some old
Blairite/New Labour garbage. Yet again, they want to dilute the union
presence in the party decision making process. Given that the mood in
the movement is for a more powerful annual conference rather than the
jamboree it became under Blair, Ed Miliband has offered up some
‘reforms’ of his own.

If the report in Today’s edition of the Guardian (click here to read it) is to be believed it seems that the Labour leadership has decided to ignore any of the good stuff which may have come out of the Refounding Labour consultation exercise and instead dig up some old Blairite/New Labour garbage. Yet again, they want to dilute the union presence in the party decision making process. Given that the mood in the movement is for a more powerful annual conference rather than the jamboree it became under Blair, Ed Miliband has offered up some ‘reforms’ of his own.

According to a Labour head-office insider: "We cannot go on with a system in which unions have 50% of the vote
at conference, and just three general secretaries of three unions
control four-fifths of that union vote. Currently, the union leaders are
playing hard ball but they need to wake up… Ed has said he wants
to do this through consensus, but he is not going to give the unions a
veto about change. We are not going to concede."

Plans being floated include reducing the union vote at conference and in elections or giving councillors and MPs a vote to shift the balance anyway. The leadership also want access to the details of union members affliated thru their union to the party so that they can contact them direct, bypassing the union bodies.

The reason for all this? The report continues: ‘A party negotiator said: "If we are going to have a conference which has
more power, then it has to come to decisions in a way that the leader
feels he can defend. The easiest thing to do would be to leave
everything as it is, let the unions defeat us, and continue to ignore
the vote." In other words, they want a conference that decides things but in a way that the leadership will have the ability to decide the outcome. The unions can no longer be trusted, in time neither will the party members, so let’s bring in MPs and councillors to swing the vote.

The report picks up on widespread opposition to this from the unions even now: ‘A senior union figure involved in the talks said: "We are fed up with
being treated as an embarrassment by successive Labour leaders. We have
put forward our own proposals to make conference the source of
legitimate party policy.’

Miliband also wants to ressurect the old Blairite scheme of dilulting the membership by having a new supporter-class of membership. This has also been correctly rejected by the unions. What is needed is a drive to get more full members recruited. To do this requires not only a drive throughout the movement but policies that will attract those layers who have moved away from Labour during the Blair/Brown years.

Earlier this year we posted a submission from a party activist in Coventry which outlined the sort of things that Labour now needed to do. Click here to read it.

Digging up the old Blairite scams to, in effect, neuter the party must be resisted. How long would it be before the rest of the New Labour garbage resufaced? Links to big business? Links to the Lib Dems depite their recent role? Rather than reducing the union links we should be building them. More union activists should be involved atall levels of the party. Unions should be dicussing and voting on the direction and policies that Labour should be taking and ensuring that those policies are not ignored. Labour should be firmly behind the fight against cut, job losses and pension cuts. They should be opposing ALL such attacks on public sector services.The movement must take control of its political voice and ensure that the voice is a socialist one aimed at getting rid of capitalism once and for all.

We say: