Unions & politics

Trade Unions and politics

Good haters, bad democrats

DALE STREET reviews The Blair Years — Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries “Some twat with a Trot poster came up to me on the way in (to the conference) and yelled ‘Butcher! Traitor!’ at me,” writes Campbell in his diary entry for 29 April 1995. “I stopped and mustered as much visual contempt as I could, then assured him that if we win the general election, then don’t worry — thanks to wankers like him, there will always be another Tory government along afterwards. These people make me vomit.” There are many people in Campbell’s diaries who make him want to vomit. Roy Hattersley is “a...

SWP volte-face on academic boycott of Israel?

SWP chief mandarin Alex Callinicos has written a rather surprising volte-face on the Israel boycott debate in the UCU lecturers union.

In the latest Socialist Worker his assessment is a) much of the left opposes the boycott b) a membership ballot on the issue (proposed by general secretary Sally...

Unions vote for political hara-kari: LRC responds

On 23 September the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth voted to ban unions and local Labour Parties from putting motions on current political issues to any future Labour Party conference. Labour Party policy-making will now be supervised by the Parliamentary-leadership-controlled “Joint Policy Committee”, and ratified by occasional take-it-or-leave-it referendums of the membership. Union leaders had said as late as 12 September before that there was “no chance” of them supporting such rule changes. A few days before the conference, though, they all buckled. Eighty per cent of the union...

Unions vote for political hara-kiri

Sunday 23 September: a grim day in Bournemouth. The unions voted overwhelmingly to disenfranchise the working class - to ban themselves (and the local Labour Parties) from putting motions on current issues to future Labour Party conferences. Click here for background, and leaflet to download . Since the vote, on the first day of Labour Party conference 2007, was on rule changes, it was by card, not by show of hands, and the result will be announced on Monday 24 September, but there is no doubt about the broad picture. No trade-union delegate spoke against the rule changes (though long-standing...

If it were made up, you'd dismiss it as too far-fetched....

The front page of the new issue of the TGWU paper Record looks like an improbably heavy-handed attempt to satirise the new relationship between the unions and the Labour Party leadership after Bournemouth. It shows TGWU general secretary Tony Woodley whispering in the ear of Gordon Brown. Brown is listening politely - preparatory, of course, to replying: "No chance, Tony! This is the new Labour Party, 'the natural party of business'! Workers' rights, indeed!" The headline reads: "Make Labour Listen!" Presumably Woodley thinks the strain on Brown's eardrums will be reduced if he doesn't have to...

Brown's plan is a death blow

It’s all very quiet. You won’t have read a lot about it in the press, heard much about it on TV, or even been told much about it by your union, if you’re a union member. But at the Labour Party conference starting on 23 September, Gordon Brown plans to end 107 years of working-class political input through the Labour Party. Not just to add “a further attack on Labour Party democracy” to the many made since Neil Kinnock’s time. Not just to introduce “more of the same”. Not just to add a further ailment to the already very sick state of working-class political representation in the Labour Party...

GLA elections: Should Tube Trade Unionists Stand?

The 2008 Mayoral and Greater London Assembly elections are likely to offer little choice for working class people in London.

For mayor, there will be Ken Livingstone, who proved he'd turned his back on workers when he said that RMT members should cross picket lines - and he's supposed to be on our...

Workers are organising in Venezuela — the question now is: with what politics?

There are signs of a revival in worker organising in Venezuela, but it is not clear whether it will be independent of Chávez.

Last week a “unification commission” of the two major factions within the UNT union federation met to organise elections for the leadership, which are long overdue. Leaders...

Dean Mighell is right - and Joe McDonald is even more right

Dean Mighell, leader of the ETU (Electrical Trades Union) in Victoria, is right: ""What we've seen [from the ALP leadership] is an incremental backing away of some fundamental union rights, and now we're going into something resembling 'WorkChoices lite'..." Kevin Rudd is becoming a "pale imitation" of John Howard. Joe McDonald, assistant secretary of the CFMEU in Western Australia, is even more right. When Kevin Rudd demanded his resignation from the Australian Labor Party on laughable charges of rude language about an employer, McDonald, unlike Mighell, refused, and challenged Rudd and his...

Brown plans to ban all motions to Labour conference - Defend the unions’ voice in politics!

By Jack Haslam Last December, during the row about the Hayden Philips Report on state funding of political parties, Solidarity warned that Gordon Brown was telling trade union leaders that he wanted an end to the situation where trade union votes defeated the leadership at Labour Party conference. Brown now wants to turn that wish into a reality. On Sunday afternoon, 24 June, just before he was crowned leader, Brown put what was presented as a non-controversial document on “improving” the policy forum process to the Labour Party National Executive Committee. Inquisitive NEC members were...

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