The left and the labour movement in the General Election

Submitted by Matthew on 5 March, 2010 - 5:49

How should the working-class left respond to the general election and the cuts that will inevitably follow, whichever party wins? Solidarity spoke to a range of activists (all in a personal capacity) from across the left. We will continue the discussion in future issues.

Inspire members with the confidence to fight back

Jerry Hicks is an activist in the Unite union and aims to become a candidate in its 2010 General Secretary election.

The pundits tell us that the gap in the polls between the parties is narrow. What was going to be an easy Tory victory now seems not to be the case. If the polls are narrowing, it’s because people still have a genuine memory and distrust of the Tories.

There’s a basic class issue here; I consider that Labour has let the working class down, but I think there’s still a basic understanding that the Tories are the party of the wealthy and it’s positive that that memory still exists.

My feeling is that the turnout in the election will be poor, but it’s not because people don’t care about politics. People are passionate about all sorts of issues — whether that’s the environment, nuclear arms or the closure of a local school or hospital — but many people rightly conclude that most politicians are careerists who promise little and do less. I have no illusions in Labour — I remember the 1997 the slogan “vote Labour, don’t trust Blair”, and I thought how good that was then, and how right it turned out to be.

I yearn for a credible alternative to the Labour Party. Where there is an electoral alternative, people should look to it. However, there are some good Labour MPs, such as John McDonnell, David Drew, Jeremy Corbyn and a (small) number of others who deserve support. I also think the Green Party is moving left, and some of their candidates also deserve support as do the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) and Respect. But where there is no alternative, which unfortunately there won’t be in the majority of constituencies, people should perhaps however reluctantly vote Labour without any illusions. Saying that I could think of a few who are too awful for me to consider voting for and thankfully I won’t have to!

John McDonnell’s failure to get enough nominations from MPs to trigger an election for Labour’s leadership was a terrible indictment of the state of democracy inside the party. The project to reclaim the Labour Party is a noble objective but one with little chance of success in my view.

The trade-union left is weak too. A few years ago the press was full of talk of the “awkward squad”, but that generation of trade union leaders hasn’t managed to push back any of this country’s anti-union legislation, or tackle the crisis of democracy that led to the travesty around the BA strike. We’ve got a situation where parish councilors are often elected unopposed. Cutting and privatising councilors are elected on turnouts of 30%, but when 90% of BA workers on an 80% turnout vote for strike action their will can be overturned by a single, unelected judge. The TUC and the trade union leaders have a responsibility not to allow that. That BA were still in a position to run the court and then allowed to get away with it is a scandal. I and millions of workers know who the enemy is, but the TUC and many union leaders have become part of the problem and no longer the solution.

I’m hoping to be a candidate in the general secretary election in my union, Unite, because I believe we need a movement prepared to lead a fightback. The Liberal Democrats promise “savage cuts”, the Tories have said they’re prepared to make themselves the most unpopular government in a generation and Brown and Darling have also promised £75 billions of pounds worth of cuts (I can answer that one scrap Trident!). Whoever gets in, it’ll impact on my sector and my union. It’ll impact on all working people and those who aren’t working, too; benefits will be cut and pensions will be attacked. The axe is definitely being wielded, which is what makes actions like the upcoming PCS strike so important. I’ll be doing whatever I can to support that.

The chips are well and truly down now. Many people won’t have faced a situation like this before and it’s a time that calls for some real steel and backbone. If we acquiesce it’s at our peril. I know people’s confidence to fight can change from day to day, but I think trade union members can be inspired. It depends on the leaders’ ability to provide that inspiration. We need to learn from the Vestas model; if my union and others had ring-fenced that factory and put some real pressure on the Labour government, including threatening to withdraw funding from the Labour Party unless it was brought into public ownership, we could’ve won and that victory would’ve made us stronger.

Opportunities like that do arise; it’s the responsibility of the leadership to instil confidence in the members and inspire them to fight. We need bottom-up campaigns supported by the unions and a leadership that will lead by example.

Making union voices heard

Val Graham is a Unison activist in Derbyshire County Council and a member of the Unison Labour Link committee for the East Midlands. She spoke to 'Solidarity' about what East Midlands Unison Labour Link is doing in the run-up to the general election.

Our regional Labour Link Forum on 27 February, where we took the major decisions relating to the general election, was reasonably well attended by Unison members, though we got only two sitting Labour MPs and one other Labour candidate there.

We decided that about half the money we have in the region will go to four selected Labour candidates on the basis of replies they gave to a questionnaire we sent out about union policies. Their constituencies have been given a certain amount of money, but tied to campaigning on the Unison “Million Voices for Public Services” initiative.

The other half is open to be bid for by Labour Link activists in other constituencies for financing leaflets, advertisements, public meetings, and so on, in line with union policy, whether it be about privatisation or trade union rights or council housing or whatever.

We had a discussion at the Labour Link Forum on the sort of things we want to do. We've talked about targeting union members for leaflets.

Our approach appears to be working in that Labour candidates are submitting their leaflets and their proposals to Unison Labour Link for ratification. I've certainly observed an impact in how the Labour candidates are behaving. I feel I've achieved something in my constituency, in Chesterfield.

Of course, that’s only the money we have in the region. I cannot answer for the money the union may spend centrally on the general election.

It seems that TULO [the joint committee of the unions affiliated to the Labour Party] has divided up Labour’s “target seats” between the unions, so almost every target seat will have some union backing for that constituency. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the other unions are operating in the same way that Unison is.

All I can say is that in East Midlands Unison, this is the way that the more assertive attitude to the Labour Party put forward in the speech by Dave Prentis [Unison general secretary] at Unison Labour Link conference last year is being interpreted.

My understanding is that the approach of tying financial support to the “Million Voices for Public Services” is national Labour Link policy. All the other Unison regions should have done the same. Whether they have or not, I don’t know. From national level, we’ve heard nothing since the Labour Link conference about implementation.

It’s difficult to say how much our approach in the East Midlands regional Labour Link has mobilised Unison members. Unison members in the region have been mobilised, but not necessarily by our initiative. In Nottinghamshire, Unison members have been mobilised by the new Tory council leader, Kay Cutts, trying to do a Thatcher on the council. The main mobilisations have been about issues like that.

I don’t know how much what is happening on the political front has penetrated the membership.

I’ve raised it at our branch committee meetings in Derbyshire County Council. We put out a regular bulletin in our Unison branch, and Labour Link has always had a short piece in it. But until I started going to the branch committee meetings, nobody told the general membership of the branch committee what was happening in Labour Link.

I’ve argued for people to make the connection and take their fight into the general election campaign, but I don’t know how many people have done that.

On the other hand, what we do over the next twelve weeks, and the Unison-approved leaflets going out from MPs and parliamentary candidates, may have an impact.

Hung parliament could be good for activism

Barry Wilton is a climate movement activist involved in Transition Heathrow

This is an interesting election, because there’s never been so much widespread disillusionment with mainstream political parties and parliamentary democracy.

A Labour government has been in power since 1997 and it’s desperately unpopular, but people don’t want the Tories. By rights they should be on course to win a landslide, but people still remember what they were like. A hung parliament is a real possibility, and I think that could be good for grassroots politics and extra-parliamentary activism. There are other concerns, too, such as the real possibility of the BNP winning some seats.

The Tories may appear to have better positions than New Labour on environmental issues, such as their opposition to the third runway at Heathrow, but when you unpick that they’re actually not much better. In terms of their overall social policies and project, they’re obviously not better at all. A lot of their policies are slipping by unnoticed; Tory policies on things like working tax credits and their plans for new trespass laws would be particularly damaging and restrictive for a lot of people involved in direct action activism. The illusion that the Tories are any better than New Labour won’t last.

Having said that, though, I think a change of government can often be healthy, though, as it creates a certain amount of ferment and fluidity. When governments are fresh and new and have made lots of promises to get in, it can be easier to put pressure on them and win change on big issues.

There’ll be lots of different voices within the environmental movement around the election. Some people will look at it pragmatically and tactically, and that view will sits alongside a more anarchist-inspired disdain for and hostility to the whole electoral process. Those who are more ideologically-focused will emphasise making systemic arguments, but there are also voices saying we need to win on immediate issues.

Climate Camp, which is itself very heterogeneous, is looking at the possibility of organising for some kind of event around the election that makes a point about the whole electoral process. Around the 1997 election, Reclaim The Streets held a “Never Mind The Ballots” party which was very successful; people have talked about replicating that model with a “bonfire of the ballots” event. Given the backdrop of mass disillusionment with electoral politics, I think that could well be the right thing to do.

There’ll be a particularly interesting political space opened up in the movement around the question of cuts. I think a lot of people will want to use the opportunity to highlight what isn’t being cut, to indicate where the government’s priorities are. I’d oppose cuts to my dole or other social service, but I’d also argue for people not to rely on those state handouts which can ultimately be used as weapons of control against us.

I’ve worked a lot with John McDonnell around Heathrow. He’s a politician with ideals and a clear set of class politics that motivates him. It would certainly be a blow if he lost his seat, so pragmatically-speaking I definitely want to see him re-elected whatever my wider attitude to the electoral process may be. Ultimately a lot of this is about pragmatism, tactical accommodation and compromise. There’s no pure space in politics.

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