Ed Miliband uses "Falkirk" to attack Labour's union link

Submitted by AWL on 9 July, 2013 - 1:09

None of the plans for change in Labour Party structures which Ed Miliband announced on 9 July have any relation even to alleged, let alone to proven, misdeeds in Falkirk.

It has been known for a while that Ed Miliband wanted at least some curtailing of union clout in the Labour Party. He tried to achieve it through the "Refounding Labour" operation, but was mostly knocked back, and then there seemed to be stalemate.

Now Miliband - maybe panicked by the agitation from the right-wing Labour pressure group Progress and the Tory press; more probably seizing on Falkirk to make a push for things he wanted to do anyway - has announced new plans.

"We do not need to change that law on the right of Trade Unions to have political funds. But... individual Trade Union members should choose to join Labour through the affiliation fee, not be automatically affiliated".

No individual is "automatically" affiliated now. Unions decide whether to affiliate or not by conference debates, and every individual trade unionist can opt of the collective decision by opting not to pay in to the political fund.

Under the Tory Trades Disputes Act, from 1927 to its repeal in 1946, trade unionists had to "opt in" to all union political funds, instead of having the chance to "opt out". It remained the union's collective decision to affiliate the whole fund (not just individual payers) to the Labour Party.

After the 1927 Tory Act, Labour Party affiliated membership fell from 3.2 million in 1927 to 2.0 million in 1928. That was a big fall, but limited because the labour movement had hundreds of thousands of activists formed in the huge battles of the 1920s, was responding to an obviously vindictive Tory measure, and had a Labour Party more union-friendly and less discredited than today.

Since 1993 Unison members can opt to pay into Labour Party affiliation or into a non-Labour political fund. For the 2010 leadership election the Labour Party sent out 419,000 ballot papers to Unison members. It sent 1,055,000 to Unite members.

Unite claimed 1.4 million members in Britain at the end of 2010, so 75% are levy-payers. Unison claimed 1.3 million, so 31% are Labour levy-payers.

The sideswipe from that Unison system is that Unison's political decisions are supposed to be taken not by the regular union conferences and structures, but by a parallel and inaccessible system of APF committees and conferences. That insulates the top officials from democratic pressure on political questions.

"Opting-in" now is likely to produce a percentage of trade unionists affiliated to the Labour Party more like the 7.5% who cast non-spoiled ballots in Labour's 2010 leadership vote.

Unison's 31% is unlikely to be reached because it depends on members who came from NUPE and COHSE into the merger which created Unison and were by default enlisted as "opting-in" if they didn't object (while those who came from Nalgo were by default "opted out"). Many new Unison members tick neither "in" nor "out" on their form, and are then allocated by Unison offices in line with existing proportions.

Miliband seems to propose a system where those who tick neither "in" nor "out" are considered "out".

Unite got an 87% majority on a 19% turnout to keep its political fund in a ballot in May 2013. The ballot material explained clearly that some of the political fund money goes to Labour. It said: "You don't need to be a Labour supporter to recognise that over the last century, Labour and the unions have provided a political balance to the Conservative Party and the rampant interest of big business... If Unite and other unions were banned from using a political voice, British politics would see a sea change".

Unions got bigger turnouts, more like 50%, in their political fund ballots in the 1980s. But that was then. More than 7.5% could be got "in" now if union leaders campaigned properly, mobilising members in an effort to win working-class policies in Labour, but the actual leaders are deficient in both will and capacity to do that.

The immediate effect of "opt-in" might be to reduce the flow of union money to the Labour Party which is affiliation fees, but increase the flow of union money which is grace-and-favour donations decided by union leaders.

But that change, in turn, would generate very heavy pressure to cut the union share of the vote at Labour Party conference, and probably also pressure to end the system of union branch delegates to Constituency Labour Party committees.

"Opting-in" seems speciously democratic. But really it enlists inertia and pressure from the billionaire press against collective working-class intervention in politics.

Suppose every individual's union membership lapsed next year unless she or he personally signed a form to "opt in" to continuing. Union membership would plummet. That would not be democratic.

Suppose that when unions affiliate to other bodies - CND, or Stop the War, or No Sweat, or whatever - they could pay money over only as and when individuals had signed forms specifically asking for part of their dues to be paid to that specific campaign. The sort of campaigns which require union money to make headway would wither.

Our movement in the past has held that there was nothing undemocratic about the system before the Osborne Judgement of 1909. Before 1909, it was a collective decision by a union whether to affiliate to the Labour Party. If the union decided, then it paid to the Labour Party out of collective funds and gained collective representation within the Labour Party.

The 1909 judgement made all union donations to Labour illegal. It was reversed by a law in 1913 which made union political funds legal as long as there was an individual opt-out.

Labour Party members have not yet been able to read the report of the Labour Party inquiry into Falkirk, but in any case this shift has nothing to do with even what's alleged against Unite in Falkirk. That was not about political levy-payers who maybe paid the levy only out of inertia - but rather about alleged problems in signing up political levy-payers also to be individual constituency members.

"A new code of conduct for those seeking parliamentary selection".

No information on what it will say. Nothing to do with even what's alleged against Unite in Falkirk: the Unite-backed candidate Karie Murphy has been suspended from the Labour Party, on what charges we don't know, but presumably under current rules.

"New spending limits for Parliamentary selections to include for the first time all spending by outside organisations".

And spending by the Tory press, which seems to have called the tune on the Falkirk selection?

"The Labour Party will establish standard constituency agreements with each trade union so that nobody can allege that individuals are being put under pressure at local level".

This is nothing to do with anything alleged in Falkirk, but reads like a move against what Unison did before the 2010 general election. It cancelled all its "Constituency Development Plan" contributions to CLPs, and said it would restore them only case by case where candidates and constituencies backed key Unison policies.

In some regions the old contributions were restored in a fairly perfunctory way, but in some, for example the East Midlands, the policy was carried out properly. Why shouldn't a union "put pressure at local level"? Isn't it precisely the job of the local labour movement to "put pressure at local level" on candidates, MPs, and councillors?

"For the next London Mayoral election Labour will have a primary for our candidate selection. Any Londoner should be eligible to vote and all they will need to do is to register as a supporter of the Labour Party at any time up to the ballot", and Labour leaders could "pioneer this idea elsewhere too".

The problem alleged in Falkirk was of people getting rights in the Labour Party without making any real commitment to it. So Miliband proposes to make that problem general! Any unscrupulous candidate could just get a bunch of their friends who had no sympathy with or commitment to the Labour Party signed up as supporters, and win a "Labour" selection that way.

The "registered supporters" scheme has been in operation for a while, and has so far flopped completely.

"New limits on outside earnings" for MPs.

Ed Miliband also announced that former Labour Party secretary Ray Collins would "lead" these changes. Although Collins has a trade-union background, he was notoriously bureaucratic and disliked by the left as general secretary.

Miliband occasionally referred to his plans as "proposals", but the tone of his speech was simply to "announce" them, although almost all need changes to the Party rule book which can be decided only by Party conference, not by the say-so of an individual leader. He seems to be so embedded in top-down, media-facing ways of doing politics that he just can't see that such a coup, or attempted coup, "from above", is the very opposite of democracy.

Unions and CLPs should remind Miliband that democracy means the majority, not just a single leader, or the single leader's backroom boys and girls, deciding.


The following text may be usefully adapted for motions in CLPs and branches of affiliated trade unions.

Notes:

The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions because the working class majority in society had no political voice representing their interests.

The Labour Party is still based on the affiliation of nearly three million working-class people through their trade unions.

The subordination over the past 20 years of the influence of rank and file members and the trade unions in the Labour Party to the influence of big business and a right wing press.

The current attacks on Unite in relation to the Falkirk West CLP selection process, and the broader attack on the Labour-union link by the right-wing media, Tories and Blairites.

Believes:

Any weakening of the trade union link and the ability of trade unions and their members to participate in the Labour party should be opposed.

As the mass organisations of working-class people, affiliated trade unions are entitled to use the democratic structures of the Labour Party in order to promote their policies and members who wish to seek selection as elected representatives of the Labour Party.

Resolves:

To defend the right of affiliated trade unions and their members to take part in the selection of candidates at every level of the party.

To politically educate ourselves about the ideas of working-class representation and the Labour Party and the unions' role in this.

To encourage more local trade union branches to affiliate to CLPs, to encourage more local union branches to send delegates to CLP meetings, and to encourage more trade unionists to join as individual members.

To work with affiliated trade unions to win support at Labour Party conferences for democratic rule changes and for pro-working-class policies on issues like cuts, the living wage, jobs, and trade union rights.

To write to Ed Miliband, to the Labour Party General Secretary and to the Labour Party NEC to demand: publication of the enquiry into Falkirk West CLP; lifting the suspension of suspended CLP members; lifting the ‘special measures’ on the CLP; scrapping of the ‘freeze date’ of 12/03/12 for participation in the selection process; the right of the CLP to select its own Westminster parliamentary candidate.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Tue, 09/07/2013 - 14:53

Len McCluskey's first reaction to Miliband's plan has been to "play clever", saying that he agrees with Miliband's plan but taking care to deliberately misunderstand it.

According to the Guardian politics blog, McCluskey told "The World At One" (9 July):

"Ed... made it clear that the political levy would stay as it is. What he's talking about is those of our members who pay the political levy, he wants them to have a second option, as it were, to see whether they want to opt in to becoming associate members of the Labour party. And it would be on that basis that unions would pay the affiliation ...

"The principle of what he's saying, about making certain that individual trade unionista actually take a conscious decision to opt in to being active in the Labour party, is something that I would welcome".

In fact it is not at all clear. If Ed Miliband wants more trade unionists to join the Labour Party as individual members, that is good, but the best way he could help is by fighting the cuts, rather than saying that he will keep them on.

Submitted by AWL on Wed, 10/07/2013 - 11:10

Detailed dissection of Miliband's proposals by Jon Lansman here: http://www.leftfutures.org/2013/07/on-the-problems-with-reforming-the-labour-union-link-the-toryprogress-way/.

Meanwhile Jim Pickard in the FT points out "If you are wondering why Len McCluskey seems so relaxed about Miliband’s reforms of the link between Labour and the unions, here is the answer. The change could shift millions of pounds of money away from the party and into the hands of the union barons...

"The reason union leaders seem relaxed (with the exception of the GMB’s Paul Kenny) is because they have noticed that the total amount of money paid by 3m members to their unions' political funds would not change.

"Although less money may go directly to Labour it will instead be available for union leaders to distribute on an ad hoc basis..."

Submitted by AWL on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 13:25

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 12/07/2013 - 12:22

Wishful thinking? You judge. http://www.leftfutures.org/2013/07/how-ed-milibands-political-levy-is-intended-to-work/#more-16012.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis has described Miliband's plan as "an unforgiveable diversion", but not actually said he will oppose it.

http://www.unison.org.uk/news/general-secretarys-blog/labour-party-trade-union-link.

Submitted by AWL on Mon, 15/07/2013 - 16:20

Will Miliband's people promote Unison's political-fund system as a model? How? By changing Labour Party rules to impose that on every affiliated union? Or by inducing every union to change its rules at its next rules revision conference (Unite's is in 2015)?

And in any case, so labour lawyer Keith Ewing points out, changes in the law proposed by the coalition government threaten to make meaningless Unison's distinction between an "affiliated" and a "general" political fund.

http://www.leftfutures.org/2013/07/a-defining-moment-for-trade-unionism/

The latter funds (the general political funds) are likely to become very significant, if the UNISON Model is any guide, as many members will choose to support their union’s political activities without supporting the Labour party.

The problem, however, is that these anticipated general political funds are about to become redundant. On 4 June 2013, Cameron announced proposals for new controls on trade union spending in elections, proposals which not enough people are taking seriously enough.

If these plans are implemented (and why would they not be?) any election expenditure by a trade union affiliated to the Labour party (including presumably from a union’s general political fund) will count as Labour Party expenditure.

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