Martin Mayer is chair of the TGWU Broad Left. He spoke to Martin Thomas at the Labour Representation Committee conference on 15 November.
I supported a lot of what was said in the conference today. The financial crisis has suddenly made the policy of social control over the banks and financial system a viable policy to put forward for the left. It has not been seriously on our agenda before, but I think it should be now.
Then I think we need to prioritise where a socialist perspective lies. We should be looking at the reversal of the privatisation of the health service and education. There's a lot of support for that.
The privatisation of the railways has never been popular. It would be very easy, and actually quite cheap, to renationalise the railways; and the same should be done with public transport. It would have a good environmental effect at the same time, transferring travel from cars to public transport.
And also the utilities. The astronomical price rises from the cartels that own the public utilities show more than ever that they need to be put back into public hands.
The other thing that would make a huge difference in this economic crisis is a big public-sector injection of cash. The most effective way to do that would be a massive council house building programme, which also deals with the housing crisis which has been completely overlooked by the Labour Party.
I'm a bit wary of the tax cuts argument, but I do agree that taking the tax burden off the poor should be a priority too.
What sort of government do you think could carry out that programme? We have a problem at the moment that the unions can't even put down a motion with that policy at Labour Party conference.
It's true that the Labour Party's democratic structure is fundamentally flawed, and I think the unions did make a tactical error last year in agreeing not to pursue contemporary - although that is time-limited [it is due for review in 2009], and we are expecting that to be restored, as there is going to be a fight to get that [the right to put motions] put back.
But I think there's a whole range of things the union movement should be doing. First of all they should be showing their support for an alternative political platform on a broad left basis, and I think the LRC is the priority vehicle to do that. It's a matter of winning the political argument with ordinary working people, and getting people back into the Labour Party to fight for that.
The trade unions are struggling to think how to do that, but there are some very good examples in other parts of the world. New Zealand, a few years ago, was confronting a fairly similar problem with their Labour Party, and the unions did have a concerted effort to get trade union organisers back into the field and people back into the Labour Party, and it was quite successful.
I think the unions need to think about an approach to regain power within the Labour Party, but it's got to be done as part of a concerted left political programme.
Currently, in the trade union movement, there's a problem with a fear of unsettling the Labour Party and the Tories getting in. We've got to confront that fear with political argument.
The RMT has called a conference for January 2009 on working-class political representation. What's your view on that?
Probably I personally won't go to it. I'm not opposed to it at all. What I think is that both the unions which are affiliated to the Labour Party, and those that aren't, should look to see where they have common ground.
The answer, really, is to say that there are different strategies to achieve the same thing, but we should be working together on a common political programme.
For the last seven or eight years now, you've seen most union elections go to the left, so that most unions now have a left leadership. Many trade unionists are disappointed that this hasn't led to any real increase in the forcefulness of the unions on the political front.
I'm not sure that is as true as you say it is. Certainly in Unite, my union, Tony Woodley has made some extremely good political statements recently. The trade unions are attempting to speak out, I think, and not getting the media attention they deserve. That's always going to be a problem; but the fact that we're not hearing, in the capitalist press and on the TV, enough said by trade unionists, does not mean that it is not being said.
Even the TUC, which many of us have been disappointed with in the past for being very moderate, recently came out with a fairly strong statement about the financial crisis. It wasn't as socialist as you or like would like to see, but it was critical of neo-liberal policies.
We need to push our unions to be united and more forceful, but they have not been doing as badly as some people have been saying.