Trade Union political funds
By Martin Thomas
Trade unions founded the Labour Party. It was common in the Labour Party's early years, and not unknown right up until the 1970s, for local Trades and Labour Councils to double-up as coordinating bodies for both the local Labour Party and the local trade unions.
For most of the Labour Party's history, the trade unions controlled 90% of the vote at party conference and a majority on the National Executive Committee. From 1928 to 1980 the relationship was symbolised by the Labour Party's central office being a sub-section of the Transport and General Workers' Union headquarters in London.
Quite often the parliamentary leaders defied party conference decisions voted through by the unions, and got away with it. Very often, the unions' preponderance in the party conference functioned more as a way by which conservative union leaders, basing themselves on their members' passivity, could protect the parliamentary leaders against challenges from the more active and radical workers in the local Labour Parties.
But the channels were there by which organised workers, if they could control their union leaders, could also control the Labour Party.
The unions still control nearly 50% of the vote at Labour Party conference. A series of changes, mostly since Tony Blair became Labour Party leader, have however made it much more difficult for rank-and-file trade unionists to have a say in and through the Labour Party.
The trade-union percentage of the Labour Party's income has gone down from 66% in 1992 to 33% in 2001. Blair and Brown would probably prefer a split if the unions launched a real fight. Short of that they will want to conciliate the union leaders a little in order to keep the 33% coming in. However, that sort of "union influence", exercised by haggling behind closed doors between union leaders and Labour Party leaders, is a different matter from the openly-debated union say, with rank-and-file input, which the old Labour Party channels made possible.
- The National Executive has been changed. The unions have only 12 out of 32 members. It has become much more like a consultative committee for the party leaders than a decision-making body. It publishes no minutes (though one Executive member, Ann Black, puts out detailed reports of its meetings as a personal venture) and does not take motions from unions or local Labour Parties.
Union representatives on the National Executive thus act under very little scrutiny from their union members, or even their union leaderships. All the unions were opposed to the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yet when left-wingers on the National Executive put motions against the invasion, first time round (before the invasion) all the union reps voted for a counter-motion which was vaguely worded but would plainly function as licence for Blair to go along with Bush if he wanted to. The second time (after the invasion), they all agreed to "move to next business" without debate. - Decision-making is further shielded from rank-and-file scrutiny by a body called the National Policy Forum, which meets two or three times a year, and, once again, publishes no minutes. The trade unions have only 30 out of 183 reps on the Forum. (The 12 union members of the National Executive are also on the Forum, but function as reps of the Executive, not of the unions).
The Forum shapes the agenda and the main documents for Labour Party conferences. - At the Labour Party conference, only four motions from the unions and four motions from the local Labour Parties are allowed. Under "high Blairism" it was no motions from the local Labour Parties. Party officials still usually manage to find tricks to whittle the four down to fewer.
The four motions from the unions are decided, de facto, by consultation between the "big four" unions, Unison, Amicus, TGWU, and GMB, which between them control some 40% of the unions' near-50% of the party conference vote. Even a relatively large union like the CWU, with 250,000 members, has no chance ever of getting a motion onto the Labour Party conference floor. Still less do the other 11 unions affiliated to the party.
The small number of motions from local Labour Parties is also an important factor in limiting effective union input.
Even before the restrictions, union leaders would usually (not always) avoid putting sharp, combative conference motions. But they did not control the agenda. Most of the agenda was set by local Labour Party motions. Once a motion was on the agenda, the union delegations were pretty much bound to vote the way their union conference policy indicated.
Thus local Labour Party motions could be "leverage" to bring left-wing policies passed by union conferences into the party conference, against the wishes of the general secretaries. No more. The Iraq war, for example, has never been debated by Labour Party conference, and trade union rights only once in recent years. - Formally, the status of conference as "the ultimate authority in the party" (as the official Labour Party website still defines it) is unchanged. De facto, many years of Blair and Brown saying flatly that they will ignore party conference decisions, and the union leaders making no protest, have changed things.
No minutes of conference are published. The 2005 Labour Party conference passed five motions directly opposing Government policy on key issues. Since newspaper and TV reporters were there, rank-and-file trade-unionists could get some idea of it. But find the actual text of the motions? Be able to refer to them to hold leaders to account? No way.
It is not only that Labour Party conference resolutions do not bind the Labour government. They no longer bind, direct, or guide anyone. There is no committee or organisation that has any obligation to act on the resolutions, or even to read them.
In the last few years, the "big four" unions have repeatedly pushed motions through party conference opposing Government policy on important issues. If such a thing had happened at any previous time in the Labour Party's history, it would have meant a huge, explosive crisis in the party.
But with all the changes in structure, now it does not mean that at all. It means only that the leaders of the big unions are using party conference to let off some steam and to signal to their members that they dissent somewhat from Blair. For union policy really to become a factor in the party, an altogether different level of mobilisation and determination is now needed.
Changes within the unions have also had made rank-and-file political input more difficult.
In Unison, the union's voice within the Labour Party is controlled not by the union conference or the union's Executive, but by a parallel structure called Unison Labour Link. Participation in Unison Labour Link is restricted to individual Labour Party members (i.e. the vast majority of Unison members who pay political-fund money into the Labour Party are excluded), and takes place through inaccessible regional meetings.
In short, the thing is run by a cabal completely beyond the control of the average member. Motions to Unison conference asking that the union do this or that politically will be ruled out of order on the grounds that the issue is the property of Unison Labour Link.
Amicus has a similar but even more inaccessible structure. Its national "political committee" is elected from regional conferences which are open only to Amicus delegates to local Labour Parties. (And many, maybe most, such delegates are full-time officials, or their cronies, appointed by full-time officials!)
The rules proposed for the new union to be formed next year by merger of Amicus and TGWU suggest something similar. "There shall be regional and national political committees for members who are individual members of the Labour Party".
A "clarification" has been granted, saying that the national political committee will be under the control of the general union Executive, but it is not at all clear that this will be sufficient to stop the new union having the same sort of insulation of its political voice from input from the rank and file that Amicus and Unison currently have.
In other words, half the union motions to Labour Party conference, and, maybe, from next year, three out of four of them, are controlled by committees which are sealed off from rank and file opinion short of an epochal upheaval in the unions. The fourth motion is the GMB's, and other features of the GMB's structure and low level of branch activity mean that this fourth motion is not much subject to rank and file influence either.
Unions where the membership has more political say, like the CWU, have no chance of putting motions to Labour Party conference. They can do things like re-targeting their contributions to Labour Party funds - for example, sponsoring only those Labour MPs and candidates who back basic union policies - and the RMT did that before it was disaffiliated by the Labour Party. But they can have a decisive influence only by spurring the bigger unions into activity.
Many unions not affiliated to the Labour Party have political funds.
Before 1910 trade unions contributed to the Labour Party directly out of their general funds. A court judgement that year made it illegal, and since 1913 the unions have had to run separate "political funds" and allow members to opt out from contributing to those funds.
In 1927 the law was changed to require trade-unionists to opt in to contributing, and in 1946 it was changed back to opt-out. In 1984 the Tories brought in a new law requiring the unions to ballot their members every ten years about continuing their political funds.
The Tories must have hoped that this would lead to many political funds being shut down. In fact, every ballot has gone in favour of continuing the political funds, and several unions have started new political funds (partly because the 1984 Act also compelled unions to pay for all political campaigning, not just party-political stuff, from political funds).
As for the four biggest unions outside the Labour Party, NUT (360,000 members), PCS (320,000), NASUWT (200,000), and UCU (120,000) - UCU and NASUWT have political funds, and NUT and PCS have voted to set up political funds. In none, not even the leftish PCS, is affiliating to the Labour Party, or any proposal to make the union party-politically active, even a starter.
RMT was disaffiliated by the Labour Party on the pretext that its Scottish region had affiliated also to the Scottish Socialist Party. RMT has now stopped that SSP affiliation, but there is neither will on the part of the RMT leadership to campaign for readmission to the Labour Party, nor any wish on the part of the Labour Party leadership to readmit.
The FBU disaffiliated from the Labour Party after its pay dispute in 2002-3. Both FBU and RMT retain links with the Labour left by their affiliation to the Labour Representation Committee.
Between about 2001 and 2003 there was a flurry of speculation on the left that a number of unions might disaffiliate from Labour and maybe even create a left-wing alternative. In fact RMT and FBU have done nothing very coherent politically since their disaffiliation.
A number of unions supported Ken Livingstone for London mayor against the official Labour candidate in 2000 without any reprisals from the Labour Party, and a good number of local union branches have supported independent working-class socialist election candidates against New Labour without reprisals.
But disaffiliation is not a live issue in the big unions (partly, but not only, because of the structures in Unison and Amicus which make it very difficult to raise any such questions). The idea has been debated repeatedly in CWU, and clearly defeated in favour of a policy of using the union's clout as best as possible within the Labour structures. The challenge is to get that policy carried out!
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Reply to Mike
"What comrades need to clarify is whether they belief the significance of all the changes noted in the original article are truly extraordinary in terms of the LPs history and represent a qualitative change in the balance of power or it's at the extreme end of normal for a viciously anti-working class LP leadership."
Mike I think this is indeed the core of the discussion.
I also agree that:
"we need a clearer formulation of why the Trade UNions are so conservative if its not just a reductive tied to Blair, affiliated to The LP explanation offered by the SP and more quietly the SWP"
The explanation is not the structures, but the reduced scope and purpose of modern trade unionism. I think that the obviously awkward formula 'Business Unionist Bourgeois workers' party' captures an aspect of this.
Further on TUs
This can only be quick but I do think that looking for an explanation purely in the Blairite changes to the LP can only be half the picture.
The problem with the Trade Unions and their apparent passivity does need some more detailed analysis. Because for a start it's not passivity active decisions are being made not to do things. For instance the NHS logisitcs strike was deliberately and repeatedly stalled until such a time it was futile. That is not to criticise the workers who repeatedly on consultative ballots voted to take action. It was the leadership who pursued 'other strategies' i.e. the courts rather than industrial action.
I've touched on this point repeatedly in writing about the NHS that there is consensus of almost anything but industrial action. Lots of examples for this.
And it is not just in the public sector but throughout where the ideology is 'partnership working' with an avioidance of any confrontation.
We detailed and discussed the developments of the 'New Realism' in detail through the eighties and nineties I don't think we've adequately summed up its apogee in the here and now.Perhaps because because we've been distracted by the appearance of the 'awkward squad'. However even they and our so-called Marxist comrades in the SP etc have bought into the basis ideology of no class struggle in the workplaces. Cf. the pensions stuff and also theorised in the SWP' take on 'political unionism'.
So in parallel to developments in the LP, and that leaves open a chicken and egg argument, the nature of the TUs has seen some very significant changes. Some of these are organisational the decay of local branch structures, breakdown in central national facilities, the seeming inability to even know who the membership is in some cases. This has shifted a lot of one time local negotiating to top table level conducted by the sensible 'often pro business' full timers.
This is not true of every union or every branch obviously. I'm particularly jaundiced by being in UNISON I suppose, but even so this is only made worse by the reports of one of our NUT comrades who attends the local council Joint Union Committee and is continually frustrated by UNISON rolling over on nearly every issue.
Anecdotes are not the way to further this and I'll try to demonstrate the above in something more analytical as I've been thinking about it for a while now.
But to conclude if Martin does believe that the changes in the LP is qualitative and any of the above is true than that implies a qualitative change in the TU's. To clarify that is actually a much more pressing and ultimately problematic issue for us.
Reply to Martin
Absolutely brief this time, I'll have to get back my copy of Rentoul's book but Kinnock also said to at least one defeat at LP conference 'they can F@@@ off if they think that's going to change my mind'. So Labour Leaders disavowing policy is also not new as you've suggested youself over disarmament.
Subscriptions
Tom, do you have any comparisons on LP subscriptions vis a vis subscriptions to other European socialist parties. I have the suspicion that the LP has always had really low subscriptions. Certainly compared with how much revolutionary groups expect people to contribute LP subscription payments are negligible.
I wonder what effect higher subscription rates would have?
Arthur Bough
A great piece
I thought this Blog entry from Arthur Bough was particularly useful.
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/5061
It gives people a feel for what the 'old labour party' was really like.
This is also worth reading too.
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/7310#comment-13845
I particularly liked the observation that Sean must have been in a different Labour Party.
The idea that a few tenth rate rule changes and minor procedural impediments to the left constitute a 'qualitative change' is pure nonesense.
The significant changes are all outside the formal structures of the party: in the confidence and combativity of the unions, in the erosion of local government etc etc
Thanks Tom
Thanks Tom,
thought I'd put the references in as hyperlinks for ease of other comrades.
The old labour party
and
Different LP
Arthur Bough
Who funds the Labour Party?
Thanks Arthur for putting those links up.
Some hard facts rather than opinion on the funding of the Labour Party.
According to the Electoral Commission between January 2001 and September 2006 the Labour Party received donations totalling £82,829,450.50.
£54,817,481.62 of this money came from the affiliated trade unions.
The 2005 accounts show the income that came from the following key sources:
Donations: £13,900,000
Membership: £3,685,000
Affiliations: £8,009,000
No matter how you choose to count the extra £11,950,000 loans involved in the 'cash for peerages' scandal the simple fact of the matter is that roughly two thirds of Labour Party funding from individuals and organisations in 2001 - 6 came from the trade unions.
In the same period rank and file party members - the overwhelming majority of whom are waged workers - contributed more to party funds in membership subscriptions and small donations than the much publicised big donations by millionaires.
If anyone is interested in investigating this matter for themselves then go to the Electoral Commission website.
Tom
Reply to the above
A reply to the above is at http://www.workersliberty.org/node/7473.
Martin Thomas
Attack of the monster straw dolls
Martin,
Most of your argument in the post above is directed entirely against straw dolls. Not just one or two straw dolls, but an entire army of them!
Instead of concentrating on discussing the issues you have misconstrued, twisted, and wrenched out of context what is said in order to construct a patently absurd argument that can then be demolished. You haven't just created little standard straw dolls these are monster fabrications!
For example, you aim a lot of what you say against a current of opinion you call the ‘nothing has changed’ school. This is a school of opinion that exists only in your mind. It is a construction, a fiction. Nobody in this discussion has argued that nothing has changed in the Labour Party. The very idea is absurd.
Your practice here is politically degenerate. You are just making things up. Either substantiate what your are saying by quoting where I say nothing has changed in the Labour Party or withdraw what you’ve said.
When you are not just making stuff up, you come up with some preposterous deductions.
For example, you imply that I think that: 'all the horrors of Blair-Brownism are no more than a reflection of the lack of confidence and combativity of trade unionists in general - that there is nothing beyond "tenth-rate" detail to make New Labour a less accurate reflection of working-class politics than Labour ever was - that, in short, New Labour is simply the Labour Party that the working class in its present state "deserves"'.
This bears no resemblance to what I actually said. What I did say was that the Blair rule changes are 'minor procedural impediments to the left' and that: 'The significant changes’ that account for the lack of opposition to Blair ‘are all outside the formal structures of the party: in the confidence and combativity of the unions, in the erosion of local government etc etc'.
This may be a different assessment to yours of the importance of the formal rule changes to the Labour Party in explaining the hegemony of Blairism, but the notion that it amounts to the idea that the working class somehow “deserves” Blairism is just rubbish.
Unfortunately this kind of low political slur as opposed to rational argument is typical of the methods of polemic employed by your side in this discussion.
You say that statement A ( a judgement that the rule changes are far from decisive to the Blair hegemony) logically implies statement Z (that the working class "deserves" Blairism), when statement Z is a plainly ridiculous proposition. You persist in making this link even though you can’t establish any necessary link between statements A and Z. It is a not very sophisticated method of putting words in people’s mouths. It was popular with the both the Stalinists and Gerry Healy.
The idea behind the tactic is 'mud sticks' and you seem to be operating on the basis that if you continue to repeat that I think 'nothing has changed in the Labour Party' or that the working class "deserves" Balirism then enough people will believe you.
Unfortunately putting words in other people’s mouths is not the lowest point that you go to. Your use of facts raises serious concerns. You argue not like somebody trying to openly look at the issues and make sense of things in order to work out what to do, but like a lawyer trying desperately to weave a plausible story.
Take this example:
You say in your reply that: “The latest Labour Party accounts available on the Electoral Commission website show income from affiliates (i.e. mainly trade unions) as £7.6 million out of £29.3 million in 2004, and £6.8m out of £26.9m in 2003.”
Martin, you know full well that this is not ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’is it? You know that it is not the accurate figure for how much money the trade unions gave to the Labour Party in those years. Because on the same website it is possible to see an entry for ‘donations’ and it is also possible to get a break down of where these donations come from. If you do this then a completely different picture emerges.
The fact is that in 2004 the trade unions gave the Labour Party £18.3 million out of £29.3 m and in 2003 they gave the party £14.8 m out of £26.9m.
Martin, I would appeal to you to abandon your destructive attitude to the current discussion and instead actually engage with what is being said.
You might make a start by ending the practice of giving people derogatory labels as a way of trying to pigeon hole what they say.
For instance there is the preposterous suggestion that one side in this debate is in favour of ‘burying themselves’ in the Labour Party or ‘full immersion’ in it, (presumably at the risk of drowning). Nobody thinks this.
That whole way of posing the question is wrong.
What the current discussion is about is an assessment and explanation of the changes that have occurred in the Labour Party and what political conclusions and judgements follow.
One thing that the discussion so far has established is that we can agree on building the LRC and campaigning for Mc Donnell.
The issue you might wish to think about is this: has the analysis of the Labour Party you and others have elaborated over recent years made it difficult for you to convince people to turn those slogans like ‘Build the LRC’ and ‘Back Mc Donnell’ into reality? And does the weight you give to questions of internal Labour Party constitution and structure, serve to breed a certain kind of conservatism and a reluctance to bother getting involved in those Labour Party structures?
I think it does.
Yours in solidarity
Tom
Just Read This
I just read this by Darren Williams on the Workers Action website (there's a name that takes me back). I think it is except for a vew exceptions on the Money.
Workers and Workers Parties
Arthur Bough
Fiction
Martin,
A great piece of Christmas fiction. Well done...
Seriously, you haven't accounted for or explained any of the patterns you describe.
For instance, are you saying that the fact PCS, UCU, NUT etc are not affilated to the Labour Party is a mark that they are more politically advanced than say TGWU or GMB? I would say it has a lot more to do with the social composition of the membership of the non-affiliated unions, the great majority of whom see themselves as professionals or explicitly 'non- party political public servants'. Put simply, most teachers and lecturers don't see themselves as 'working class'.
There is still the same extent of labour voting loyalty amongst the membership of the 'blue collar' unions than there was 25 years ago. I.e. a fair bit more than the thesis of a collapse of labour loyalty allows for...
As for the FBU dis-affiliation. This was described I think accurately by a leading FBU militant as the product of an unholy alliance of the SWP/SP and the Tories. The FBU pulling out of the Labour Party gave the Blairites exactly the result they wanted out of the strike.
Maybe, the reason dis-affiliation has made no headway in the big blue collar unions and has been sidelined in CWU is that there is no support for it in the working class. Or I should say no support outside of Tory voters, active 'non-politicals' and the delusionary left.
The fact that frustration at labour's failure to deliver has not manifested itself in a much more powerful movement for dis-affiliation should make people stop, think and review tactics.
The idea that the CLPs ever 'controlled' the agenda of party conference is a fiction more suited to the Daily Mail than a marxist publication. See Minkin for instance.
Not quite the whole picture
Martin says:
'The trade-union percentage of the Labour Party's income has gone down from 66% in 1992 to 33% in 2001'
This is an example of what you can do with one questionable 'fact' taken in isolation.
Rather than focussing on 2001 why not take the average level of trade union funding for the Labour Party over the last 5 years?
errr, because then it doesn't show what you want it to show.It shows the opposite!
In an article designed to inform and educate this kind of selective use of statistics is very bad practice indeed.
What I think is a particular cause for concern is the fact that the 31% figure that Martin chooses to use is itself highly questionable. New Labour spin has been known to count the sources of party income in some very odd ways indeed in order to paint a false picture. The idea is to plant stories in the press along the lines of 'end of union dominance', 'party now gets more funds from business'etc etc. One way of doing this is to present union affiliation fees as income from membership and to count this separately from union donations.
The fact is that between 2001 and 2005 £42 out of £66 million in funds came from the trade unions. Roughly two thirds, so more or less the same as in 1992.
These figures come from the Trade Union and Labour Party Liason organisation, not from some Millbank briefing.
More 'facts' from martin
Martin seems to be working on the principle that if you repeat something often enough, no matter how misleading it is, people might believe you.
He says:
"Unions where the membership has more political say, like the CWU, have no chance of putting motions to Labour Party conference. "
"Even a relatively large union like the CWU, with 250,000 members, has no chance ever of getting a motion onto the Labour Party conference floor"
Fact is that the CWU has got motions onto conference floor at the last two conferences. They have done this by combining parts of their motions together with that of other unions. This process is called 'compositing' and has been going on for a very long time at Labour Party conference.
Both this year and last CWU ended up seconding motions to conference on the issues of agency labour and post office privatisation. Both motions brought oppositon from the Blairites. In both cases CWU won the vote.
If this isn't getting motions on conference floor what is?
Another view
I received this e-mail from a member of one of the labour party affiliated unions.
"Tom,
A few points on Martins piece
1. Factually wrong on the claim that there were no votes on the war in Iraq. There were two votes, one before and one after.
There was a vote the September before the military invasion the following year, there were two composites. One was the Blairite one that mentioned UN support, but fell short of saying this was necessary before an invasion, but was spun as if it did say that. The other said baldly no military action in Iraq. The vote at the Conference was 60%-40% for the blairite one, with the Unions voting in roughly the same proportion for and against as the CLPs.
The second vote was a composite from CLPs on early withdrawal of troops after the war (I think it was 2004) and it was lost massively with the CWU the only union voting for. There was also an NEC statement that supported status quo. The Union consensus was not to raise the issue of Iraq at Conference (as it had been the year before) so when it was on the agenda they were not prepared to support a critical motion. I know that John Holmes (CWU) broke ranks with the Union NEC group and voted for the withdrawal motion at the NEC and abstained on the statement.
2. The composites passed at Conference and Policy forum agreements are widely available with the labour movement. They are referred to and used by TULO and the Unions that proposed them. For example the commitment on the Post Office is widely quoted in the CWU. At present there is a tick list of the Warwick agreement that records what has been delivered and what has not that is the subject of negotiations between the Govt and the Unions. As a Union NEC members have access to this. It is not secret!
3. The accountability of Union NEC members to their union is a matter of union democracy not Labour Party democracy. The main issue of accountability of Union reps on the LP NEC or NPF is making sure that they turn up to put forward the Unions view at all. We should be encouraging Union reps to take their political role seriously and in a coordinated and organised way, ie use the democratic structures that exist not whingeing about how this is not possible when clearly it is. The fact that the big four unions are getting their act together more in the LP is something we should think is good, not bad.
To use an industrial analogy, your response to a Union executive doing a dirty deal on an industrial matter would not be to abandon the industrial structure that calls EC members to account. It would be to use the structures of accountability more effectively and to change the make up of the executive. Martin doesn’t seem to want to apply this model to the Labour Party. He uses the fact that the structures have not been used effectively to pretend that they can’t be used.
4. The claim that smaller unions cannot get their issues on the agenda of LP Conference is not only disproved by the CWU but also on the issue of bringing the rail back into public ownership, proposed by TSSA and ASLEF, in 2005 I think, or may have been 2004.
Speak soon "
LP Conference
Tom
I'm not going to argue with you about the facts.
But I think for the sake of balance, this discussion should register the fact that those resolutions that have been passed by Labour Party conference against the leadership - rail renationalisation, fourth option for Council housing etc - have been ignored by the government.
Clutching at straws
Tom seems to be clutching at straws to pretend that nothing has changed, when plainly a lot has changed.
1. Tom knows very well that I am against union disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and think it a good thing that in the one union where there has been a fairly reasonable and sustained debate on the issue, CWU, the idea has been defeated. I never even suggested that the non-affiliation of PCS, NUT, UCU, and NASUWT makes them politically more advanced. Nor that the disaffiliation of FBU was a good thing. But FBU disaffiliation was not just a plot by SWP, SP, and Tories. And the fact that disaffiliation is not an issue in e.g. Amicus is not simply due to all Amicus's ex-MSF or ex-Unifi members seeing themselves as working-class in a way that routine civil service workers don't. A silence in large part imposed by the Amicus regime cannot be taken as solid evidence that "real workers" are as Labour-loyal as ever.
Equally, Tom knows very well that I am in favour of fighting for unions to hold to account their representatives at union conferences, at Policy Forum, and in the National Executive. But I point out the obstacles and difficulties in the way. Is Tom claiming that in order not to discourage the poor dear trade-unionists, we have to pretend that those obstacles don't exist, and essentially everything is still as it was? I think trade-unionists will be more discouraged if we tell them that the channels of accountability are all as accessible as they used to be, and then they come up against the reality.
2. I did not say that the CLPs controlled the agenda of Labour Party conference. But in the late 1980s, as Tom himself will be able to remember, activists in the Socialist Organiser Alliance (a forerunner of AWL) were able at each Labour Party conference, year after year, to force a debate on union rights, between a radical motion promoted by us and a "softer" one (though by today's measure even that would seem "hard") from one of the large unions. Nothing like that would be possible today, even for a left current much stronger in the CLPs than the SOA ever was. There was nothing unique, for the pre-Blair era, in what we did in the 1980s. Think back to the Norwood resolution (on unilateral nuclear disarmament) in 1957, or the Reading resolution in 1944, as examples of CLP motions forcing issues.
3. So the CWU has been able to wriggle in, from time to time, to second a motion? But before the present regime it could put a motion to conference every year in its own right, with a large degree of confidence that CWU would dominate (and be able to move) any composite constructed around it. That's a big change.
4. Yes, the Iraq issue has surfaced briefly at Labour Party conference. But it has never had proper debate, nor more than a stifled fraction of the attention that e.g. the Vietnam war got in its day, or even the 1991 Kuwait war. The fact that when the issue surfaced briefly, "the Union consensus was not to raise the issue of Iraq at Conference (as it had been the year before) so when it was on the agenda they were not prepared to support a critical motion", tells us a lot about what has changed. Iraq is a big issue, accessible to all, on which very large numbers of union activists feel strongly. But even at conference, let alone at Policy Forum and National Executive, that feeling can be silenced.
5. Of course it's a lot to do with union democracy. A chunk of the article is given over to pointing out how part of the decay in Labour democracy is due to structural changes in the unions, not just structural changes in the Labour Party. "The big four getting their act together" is by no means necessarily a good thing. It means that the union input to Labour Party conference is more tightly controlled by a small cabal of general secretaries. In other words, it's very difficult - not quite impossible, but very difficult - to get issues on the conference agenda unless Dave Prentis (of Unison) and Derek Simpson (of Amicus) agree to them being put on. Prentis and Simpson being what they are, and also being (as described in the article) heavily insulated from rank-and-file pressure or accountability on these issues, that is not a good thing.
6. It is not just that the Labour government has ignored the five 2005 conference resolutions. It is that:
(a) the government said immediately and flatly that it would ignore them, and the unions which pushed through those resolutions made no protest;
(b) all the structures of the Labour Party have ignored them;
(c) for most purposes, they have been pushed into a black hole.
Compare, for example, the 1960 Labour Party conference vote for unilateral nuclear disarmament. We can take it as certain that if some quirk of politics had led to a general election in early 1961 which Labour had won, the resulting Labour government would not have implemented that policy. However, there would have been a row. The policy could not just be dropped into a hole. The Labour leader of the time, Hugh Gaitskell, did not say: "Oh, that's just a conference resolution. Of course we'll pay no attention to it". He said he would "fight and fight again" to reverse the decision, and so he did. There has been a change.
7. Yes, in the CWU, Labour conference policy on keeping the post office public is fairly well known. But if you claim that "the composites passed at Conference are widely available within the labour movement", please say where. Earlier this year some of us made a fairly concerted attempt to locate the text of the five composites passed in 2005 and get them up on the website of the Labour Representation Committee. We failed. I'm sure a more concerted attempt, with greater resources, would have succeeded. But (a) it was hard to find the texts; and (b) it was just as hard to drum up any enthusiasm for the project of finding and publicising them. This would never have been true in the past if the unions had passed a big range of composites opposing the government on key issues.
8. When the Warwick Agreement first leaked out, the text we saw - I well remember - was headed "confidential". Yes, the Labour leadership still sees the union leaders as a "client group" to placate, up to a point. But that sort of haggling behind closed doors is different from the possibility of visible, accountable union political input which we had before the present regime. By the way, a summary of the Warwick Agreement is easily available, at http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/articles/employment.html, but where can we (easily) find the actual text?
9. The general picture I present on Labour Party funding does not depend on some Millbank press release, or even on the particular snapshot figures which I cited for brevity, but on works like e.g. Dave Osler's "Labour Party plc". TULO will obviously want to "play up" the union financial contribution, and its figures can't be taken uncritically any more than the Blairites'. By the way, the point I made is that 33% (or whatever) is still substantial. It makes the Labour Party leaders want to haggle with the union leaders (especially since they can evidently placate them with such small sops). That's different from accountability.
LP Conference
Janine makes a reasonable point in regard to the motions passed against the leadership not having a significant impact on practical policy. However the assumption is again that this is something new. I've got a copy of Minkin's Contentious Alliance open in front of me and on pages 312-313 he details all the confeence defeats suffered by the leadership between 1979 and 1989.Now I haven't had time to study detail of all the motions and whether the defeats were on the basis of passing progressive motions. But familiar themes are there NHS, Education, Pensions, nuclear Disarmament, renationalisation etc. There are also the contemporary motions: support for the miners, amnesty for sacked miners, South Africa.
Although the highpoint is Bennism, the peak is 84/85 with 10 and 9 defeats and then 88 with 9. So whilst we should register the fact that recent defeats had no impact on the government most leadership defeats in opposition had little impact after Bennism.
The question then becomes what do such votes actually represent in terms of an opposition movement inside the LP? Or more specifically hopes for developing a new oppositional movement around the McDonnell campaign.
Some already belief it's all a waste of time. Some suggest any TU opposition is just posing on behalf of the TU tops.For example the 'outrage' of Dave Prentis being cut short on the NHS and Jack Dromey coming to his rescue was a bit of pantomime.
What comrades need to clarify is whether they belief the significance of all the changes noted in the original article are truly extraordinary in terms of the LPs history and represent a qualitative change in the balance of power or it's at the extreme end of normal for a viciously anti-working class LP leadership.
Go with the first option and why aren't we supporting calls for disaffiliation as the LP structures are so sewn up there is no possibility of any political resistance having an impact. To continue would be the political equivalent of banging your head against a wall. At the time it gives a little relief but ultimately causes you damage so it's better to develop a more appropriate coping strategy if you've got that insight.
Personally I think we need a clearer formulation of why the Trade UNions are so conservative if its not just a reductive tied to Blair, affiliated to The LP explanation offered by the SP and more quietly the SWP.
There is qualitative change, but it's not all a waste of time
1. There has been qualitative change. I refer back to the original article. It's not just that the Labour government has ignored conference policy. (a) The Labour leadership has said flatly that it will ignore policy. (b) There has pointedly been no protest from the unions. (c) All Labour structures, not just the government, have pretty much ignored conference policy. This is not just "business as usual". E.g. in 1983 the Labour manifesto contained many of the leftish policies passed by recent Labour conferences, though the Labour leadership signalled pretty clearly that they would not carry out those policies if elected. After Kinnock got the leadership, he fought to reverse those leftish policies one by one. On the back of the miners' defeat, he succeeded. But he didn't and couldn't just say "oh, those are conference policies. Obviously we'll ignore them".
2. That doesn't mean that pushing for union activity and accountability within the Labour structures is a waste of time. The unions could do a lot more even in those structures. E.g. protest when their conference resolutions are demonstratively ignored! Make their National Exec reps act in line with union policy! Further: the unions could change the structures. Even if we could be sure in advance that all such moves by the unions would be blocked by the Blair-Brown machine - with Blair-Brown eventually cutting off the unions altogether - the first step to mobilising the unions politically has to be to fight for the members' control over the political voice the unions have already. Leftish unions like RMT and FBU could not change the Labour Party on their own - or even get their own motions onto Labour conference floor - but they could have, and should have, campaigned to stir up and mobilise other unions.
3. The reduction in working-class political input is explained by (a) the change in Labour structures, so that it requires very much more push from the rank and file - or, I suppose, very much more determination from a genuinely left-wing union leadership - to make a political impact in those structures; (b) by changes in the structures of the unions (as detailed); (c) by a generally low level of activity in the unions. These three factors intertwine: the relative (not absolute, but relative) impermeability of the structures helps keep union-membership political activity low.
Reply to Martin
Martin,
It isn't possible to discuss whether or not there has been a qualitative shift in the Labour Party or what practical conclusions might flow from it on the basis of incorrect information.
The problem with your latest article and the recent editorial on the Labour Party, is that they are so laced with factual errors, incorrect information and radically skewed constructions that they cannot be taken seriously as the basis for any kind of analysis.
To repeat just two key points that you get wrong.
1) It is factually incorrect and misleading to tell people that the unions now contribute less than a third of the Labour Party's income. The figure is close to two thirds.
2) It is false to claim that smaller unions can't get resolutions onto conference floor. We have given you examples.
The question that comes to mind is that given that things are bad enough in the Labour Party anyway, why do you feel the need to present things as even worse than they actually are?
In order to move the discussion forward it might be worth concentrating on trying to identify where we do agree.
I agree entirely with your point made later on in the article that : "Leftish unions like RMT and FBU could not change the Labour Party on their own... but they could have, and should have, campaigned to stir up and mobilise other unions."
This represents a welcome change from a few years ago. Gone is talk of a situation of 'flux' in relation to the union political funds. There are no longer articles speculating that the RMT expulsion could be a move with the same potential significance as the founding of the original LRC.
What you are now saying is the exact opposite of the tenor and feel of the 'analysis' in 2002/3:
"Between about 2001 and 2003 there was a flurry of speculation on the left that a number of unions might disaffiliate from Labour and maybe even create a left-wing alternative. In fact RMT and FBU have done nothing very coherent politically since their disaffiliation"
That marks real progress. You seem to be accepting that the AWL was caught up in the 'flurry of speculation' you describe. I think that would be right.
Much better the point made in the main article in the latest supplement.
"Since the end of their affiliation to the labour party these unions (FBU and RMT) have become less, not more, politically committed and effective"
The mistake that was made a few years ago was that instead of saying clearly and unambigously that disaffilating from Labour or setting yourself up for expulsion was a diversion, the AWl allowed itself to be blown about by the force of hot air generated by the likes of Bob Crow.
There was a piece of pseudo radical phraseology employed. The 'tactical use of political funds'. It was argued that not wanting the unions to abandon the Labour Party was somehow shoring up Blairism. This is how the 2003 conference motion put it:
"One possibility is to argue for continued exclusive support of the New Labour Party. We could now adopt such a position only on one of two grounds. Either, that we expect the new bourgeois execrescences to be shrugged off the body of the Labour Party, and old Labour to re-emerge.
Or, that we want to keep the trade union funds that go to New Labour as a unified mass of politically-directed money that can then tidily be transferred to the replacement mass trade-union-based party which we advocate...
"Our central political demand on the unions - that they fight Blairism within the Labour structures, right through to a break, and found a new working-class trade-union-based party - does not oblige us to oppose everything short of that. It does not oblige us to oppose any tactical fragmentation of the union political funds."
While being true in the abstract, formulas like this were in the real world merely a reflection within the AWL of the bombastic posturing of people like Crow.
Re-orientation around the McDonnell campaign should make it possible to make up ground lost during this period.