Winning Labour for working people?

Submitted by cathy n on 11 July, 2012 - 12:45

Over a hundred people, mostly trade union activists, met on 7 July for a day-conference called by Norwich and District Trades Council. The Trades Council will have been encouraged by the good turn-out, which included a layer of young activists.

Part of the conference’s agenda was to start re-vitalising the trade union/Labour Party link at grass-roots level. Several speakers argued that the LP was changing under Ed Miliband. Gary Doolan, GMB’s Political Organiser, warned of what the Tories would do if they secured a majority at the next election, and urged union-members to mobilise in support of the LP. The TUC had put £5M into the Trade Union Liaison Organisation (TULO) to help this mobilisation.

Mark Ferguson, editor of the Labour List website, argued that Labour had been too distant from its working-class supporters and too closed to them in recent years. But the Party understood the need to reflect the social composition of modern Britain in its membership and leadership, and was taking steps to do so.

Paul Kenny, General Secretary of GMB, gave a well-received speech critical of the gap between leaders and led in the Party. He said the election of Ed Miliband was the first step in a new direction, and that unity behind the leader was essential. This might be read as a warning to the Blairite rump, for example, those involved in the Progress group. Kenny warned that if the Tories were returned at the next election they would seek to strip away all employment rights. This was an issue for all working-people, not just for trade unionists. He talked about the many resolutions at GMB’s conference which opposed the Labour/trade union link. Those who moved such resolutions did so, he felt, out of an honest and respect-worthy desire to oust the government. They did not really want the link dissolved. As a result of the debate around these resolutions, GMB had decided to increase the money spent fighting the Tories. He ended by saying he did not want a one-term Labour government that looked like ‘Tory-lite’.

A variety of workshops followed, fronted by groups such as The People’s Charter, Fair Pensions campaign, Compass, Fabians, Movement for Change and others. Several speakers pointed out Labour’s culpability in opening a road for privatisation and the destruction of social gains, and emphasised the need for the Party to break decisively from neo-liberalism, in order to win back the trust of organised workers.

A woman challenged the conference-organisers about the sexist composition of the opening panel. The fact that all the speeches which began the conference were made by men underscored the way the event seemed in some ways a throwback to the gatherings of a generation earlier. On the positive side, trade-unionists met and discussed the crucial issue of how to make use of the links between Labour and the unions in order to assert union-policy within the Party. But blindness to gender-inequality within the movement, and an emphasis on uniting behind a new leader and drawing a line under the past rather than accounting for it, signal how much more needs to be done.

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