Unions & politics

Gordon Brown has responded to the funding scandals by reopening the question of increased state funding for political parties, and curbs on trade unions' rights to fund political parties. His speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum at the start of December is reproduced in full on the Labour Party website . For informative background from Peter Kenyon's blog, click here . Brown's speech was vague, and according to comrades who were at the National Policy Forum, no precise proposals were put to the Forum. The best guess seems to be that Brown will go for: - Some harmless reforms of the...

Long working hours are on the increase again in the UK, after a gradual ten-year decline in people working more than 48 hours a week, according to new TUC figures. More than one in eight workers now work more than 48 hours each week, with as many as one in six in London putting in more than 48 hours a week. The TUC figures, taken from the Labour Force Survey, show that over three million workers or 13% of the work force now work more than 48 hours a week. The figures probably underestimate the real scale of excessive hours, as migrant workers and others, such as some hotel and care staff, are...

A "relaunch to achieve workers’ representation” — that is what supporters of Solidarity will be arguing at the conference of the Labour Representation Committee on 17 November. The Bournemouth Labour Party conference decision to ban motions from unions and local Labour Parties at future conferences completed a full shut-down of the Labour Party’s living political link of accountability to the labour movement. It has forced every socialist who has taken the life of the Labour Party seriously — and every socialist should have done, because for over a hundred years the life of the Labour Party...

THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT, NEW LABOUR, AND WORKING-CLASS REPRESENTATION: Class, union and party. By John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna. April 2004.

Dear Tony Woodley, We hear that at a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Bournemouth (23-27 September), you invited a mild critic of your knee-bending before Gordon Brown to “come outside and say that!” Your offer to punch your critic at least shows some fighting spirit — but, Tony, isn’t it the wrong sort of fight, and isn’t it misdirected? Evidently you have a bad political conscience? So you should! Your decision, and that of the other “left” and not-so-left trade union leaders, not to oppose Gordon Brown’s moves to abolish Labour Party conference is astounding. Abolition is what...