Unions & politics

Trade Unions and politics

Will the unions call Blair to account?

Seven years after Blair's New Labour Party formed its ostentatiously anti-Labour "Labour" government, there are signs at last that the trade unions are beginning to call the Blairites to account. It is not, in all conscience, before time. The most astonishing fact about the last seven years in British politics is that this viciously anti-working class government - whose ministers, for example, proudly bray that they have stopped EU trade union and social rights being extended to British workers - has in all that time been financially backed by the trade unions! Like the masochist paying...

Taking politics back to the workplace

Alex Gordon , from the South Wales and the West region of the seafarers' and railworkers' union RMT, and Billy Hayes , the General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, contributed to our debate on working class political representation at our Ideas for Freedom Summer school on 3-4 July. We print extracts from their speeches below Alex Gordon Working class political representation is under pressure from the impact of globalisation. Industrial struggle hasn't gone away but political struggle has moved out of Parliament - and onto the streets. The last few years have seen neo-liberal...

Union leaders' "concordat" with New Labour

This is an abridged version of a report from the Labour Party National Policy Forum on 23-25 July 2004 written by Ann Black (a "Centre Left Grassroots Alliance" member of Labour's National Executive) and circulated by email. The National Policy Forum discussed the content of New Labour's manifesto for the next general election. Under the Labour Party's current rules, Labour Party conference at the end of September gets only a take-it-or-leave-it vote on this, with amendments debarred. The only vote on detail will be where a sufficiently strong minority from the Forum insists. Ann Black reports...

Firefighters vote to leave Labour

Anger at the Government's treatment of firefighters since the 2002 pay dispute came to a head on 17 June when the Fire Brigades Union conference voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the Labour Party. Delegates backed disaffiliation by five to one on a show of hands, and by 35,105-to-14,611 on a card vote, rejecting a proposal from the FBU's Executive Council to reduce the union's affiliation fee from £30,000 to £20,000 as part of a political fight within the Labour Party. Those supporting the disaffiliation motion - submitted by the union's Northern Ireland, Strathclyde and Greater...

CWU debates relationship to Labour

By a CWU member The conference of the postal and telecoms workers' union, the CWU, discussed the relationship of the union to the Labour Party in the context of the expulsion of the the RMT, and an expected disaffiliation of the FBU. There were several propositions calling for the union to take a more pro-active stance towards the Labour Party, including one calling for a review of the supported MPs and a calling to account of CWU delegates to Labour Party bodies, as well as support for the Labour Representation Committee. However at the last moment an Emergency proposition was taken that...

GMB refuses election donation to New Labour

GMB PRESS RELEASE 06/07/2004 LABOUR PARTY FUNDING GMB MEMBERS VOTE TO GIVE PARTY £0 A 'WATERSHED MOMENT' APPROACHING GMB is the General, Municipal and Boilermakers Union, one of the largest trade unions in the UK. The GMB Union's Central Executive Committee (CEC) has today voted to give the Labour Party £0 after the Party approached trade unions for additional funding towards its General Election campaign. The Labour Party had asked the GMB to consider contributing an extra £744,000 to the Party's central coffers. Instead the GMB's executive has voted to fund only those Labour MPs who 'share...

Rail Unions in Politics: the Future

One of the reasons that Blair was able to push through PPP is that the trade union bureaucracy allowed him to. RMT's Vernon Hince gave Blair an easy ride during his years on Labour's Executive. Although there was more protest noise during Mick Rix's reign, ASLEF has put up little fight within Labour. And TSSA has been so compliant that the Government has rewarded its former General Secretary Richard Rosser with a seat in the House of Lords. This weak and deferential betrayal of rail workers looks set to continue with TSSA's and ASLEF's new General Secretaries, unless members force a change...

CWU to back Labour Representation Committee?

By a CWU member At the General Conference of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) (14 June) the European Working Time Directive will be discussed. At present, different sections of the union have different policies on whether individual opt-outs should continue. The Telecoms Executive negotiates with telecoms companies to get rid of opt-outs, and its policy is for an end to them. The Postal Executive, however, believes that because of the low pay in Royal Mail and other companies, long working hours are necessary for now. The union's answer should be to fight for a shorter working week, and...

"Big Four" demands: "confidential" but not confident

In Solidarity 3/52 we reported how the leaders of Britain's biggest trade unions, Amicus, GMB, TGWU and Unison, had drawn up demands for the manifesto Labour should stand on in the next general election. We now have a copy of that manifesto, although it remains "private and confidential". It does not include, for example, a promise to repeal the Thatcherite anti-trade union laws that Labour keeps in place in order to cow union members and prevent them taking effective action in pursuit of their goals. The trade union leaders' demands do not include a promise to tax the rich and private...

Marxists and the workers' party. Labour: norm or exception?

Martin Thomas concludes a series on "Marxists and the workers' party" with a warning against fetishising the trade-union-based forms of "old Labour" In 1909, Karl Kautsky, then a Marxist, wrote that moves to set up trade-union-based Labour Parties in continental Europe "must be fought with all the means at our disposal" (Neue Zeit, July 1909, Vol.13 no.7, pp.316-28). Lenin, a few years earlier, had opposed the call for a broad "labour congress" in Russia. "A labour congress means 'taking down the signboard'… it means merging with the Socialist-Revolutionaries [populists] and the trade unions…...

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