"If they [the power companies] still don't get the message, this government should consider taking these essential industries - gas, electricity, water - back under public ownership", declared Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley at the Labour Party conference (22 September).
"If it's good enough for the banks, it's good enough for our utilities".
A sign that the union leaders are being jolted by the economic crisis into a more assertive stand? We can hope so, but so far the evidence compels scepticism.
At the conference the union leaders have also rallied to Gordon Brown, shelving the sometimes sharp criticisms they have made of him over the past 18 months. "There is a real sign now that Gordon Brown will throw off the shackles of New Labour and win back disaffected Labour voters", declared Derek Simpson, Woodley's job-share partner at the top of Unite.
What sign? Simpson didn't say. Instead, he covered up with bluster against the alleged "über Blairites", like Charles Clarke. "The spectacle of the political has-beens and never-weres queuing up to criticise the prime minister over the last few weeks has been pitiful".
At the conference, the union leaders made no protest about the fact they can no longer propose motions there to determine Labour policy. They gave away that right at 2007 Labour Party conference. No union called its leaders to account on that at this year's union conference.
All that Labour conference can do now is vote for "issues" to be discussed by Labour's "National Policy Forum". Union leaders gave the proposal for a windfall tax on power companies enough votes to get that status. Another resolution backed ending Britain's opt-out from the European Union working time directive; but, according to the Guardian, party officials said that vote was overruled by another resolution which accepts that only abuses under the working time directive will be remedied by the government.
What will happen to "issues" when they get to the Policy Forum? What are the leaders of the big unions really up to?
The last Policy Forum was at the end of July. In the run-up to it, the union leaders had briefed the press extensively that this time they would fight. With the Labour Party financially strapped and needing to beg cash from the unions, they were well placed to do that.
In fact they didn't. The story is told in the autumn 2008 edition of "Campaign Briefing", and worth tracing, both to understand where the union leaders are at, and just how hollow Labour's remaining "democracy" is.
Submissions to the Forum are restricted to amendments to six documents from the leadership. That restriction encourages timidity, but does not absolutely compel it.
The unions submitted hundreds of amendments. This year, for the first time, the local Labour Parties (CLPs) also had the right to put amendments, and submitted four thousand.
However, those CLP amendments had to be filtered through regional meetings of Forum delegates. The Forum delegates supposedly representing CLPs are not elected directly by the parties, but by CLP delegates at Labour's annual conference, and show a political balance quite different from the CLPs. Campaign Briefing categorises only one of those delegates as "Centre Left", whereas four (half) of the CLP reps on Labour's national executive (elected directly by CLP members) are "Centre Left".
Those regional meetings were under no obligation to send the CLP amendments on to the Forum. They did send on about 1500 of them.
At the Forum, ministers and officials laboured over two days through "group meetings", "seminars", and "side meetings", to beat down the CLPs and unions to "consensus wording".
On the final day, still behind closed doors, just a few dozen amendments remained to be actually voted on. By then the union delegates had agreed to abstain, as a block, on anything controversial, in order to "save" whatever feeble behind-closed-door concessions they had got from ministers.
The unions as such have only about 30 out of 190 delegates at the Forum. But, for example, union members of the national executive can also attend; so, if the unions mobilise their forces, compel their national executive members to vote with union rather than executive policy, and mobilise a few CLP delegates, they have a big enough minority at least to get their policies to go forward as "minority positions".
They didn't do that. Only two out of the over 4000 amendments eventually went forward as "minority positions", and those were minor proposals coming from Sir Jeremy Beecham, an extremely respectable New Labour local government dignitary.
The windfall tax went down with only five votes in favour (the four "Centre Left" executive members, and the one "Centre Left" CLP rep). The union leaders who now make speeches in favour of it sat on their hands.
Most other leftish proposals got only the same five votes. Outright opposition to Academies, for example, didn't even get to the table; a proposal for "independent research" to be done into their worth got just six votes; one for at least one-third of the governors at Academies to be parent-governors was the most successful left proposition, getting 33 votes, still not enough for a "minority position".
Now the union leaders have done their deal with Brown (at that July Forum); even if they feel a bit more militant next year, they are unlikely to unpick the deal only a few months before a general election. And it all happens behind closed doors; the vast majority of union activists do not even know that the Forum is taking place, let alone how their representatives vote there.
Working-class activists need to re-establish a form of political representation open to scrutiny by, and democratically controllable by, the rank and file.
