Unions & politics

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch speaking As strikes burgeon in the UK, we are also seeing a resurgence of the decades-long drive to legally suppress strikes. The edifice of multiple anti-union/anti-strike laws introduced under the Thatcher and Major governments was completed by 1993; the 1997-2010 Labour governments did nothing to touch these laws; and the next attack, the Trade Union Act, was not passed till 2016. Then, in July 2022, we had the legalisation of agency labour for strike-breaking, and now an attack on transport workers’ right to strike. The Tories are not moving as fast or on...

Sign the statement protesting against the Labour leadership's attempt to ban Workers' Liberty here Labour’s new lead in the opinion polls has encouraged the unreconstructed Blairites who now run Keir Starmer’s office to push further to make the Labour Party ultra-safe for capitalism. Labour has expelled Andrea Egan, president of Unison, and Martin Mayer, formerly a Unite rep on Labour’s National Executive. The charges are risible: “liking” social media posts from Socialist Appeal (Egan) and Labour Against the Witchhunt (Mayer), many years ago, when (even if you think the current bans are right...

TUC demonstration, 18 June TUC Congress finally took place on 18-20 October. The hastily reorganised Congress was both shorter and less well attended, with many unions deep into campaigning mode. Although the mood very much reflected the upsurge in strike action and the imminence of further ballots, the gathering was flatter than ever, with most participants preferring the commodious hospitality of Brighton hotels to actually planning the serious, sustained fightback necessary. Probably the best discussions on Congress floor took place around reproductive rights, sexual harassment and trans...

Finlay Asher from Safe Landing spoke to Sacha Ismail from Solidarity . Part one of this interview is here . I think the “Citizens’ Assemblies” that have happened already haven't been perfect, but it’s very good they’ve happened already . They’ve produced useful suggestions , many of which have been ignored by politicians because of a lack of organised pressure. Something that comes up time and time again is pitching the environment vs. the economy. Citizens’ Assemblies recommend that we need to eat less meat, drive less, and fly less… But the government’s response is that air traffic growth...

Kim Moody’s new book Breaking the Impasse brings together an argument that the US left needs to look at the recent labour upsurges (Amazon, teachers’ strikes, nurses) as the way forward in breaking from the broken two-party model of American politics. He criticises the “New Social Democratic Nostalgia” which exists in wings of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for a rose-tinted view of how major reforms from the New Deal and Civil Rights era were won, supposedly by coalition politics. In short the book is a rejection of both the Communist Party popular front and the “realignment”...

More commentary on Unite's approach to politics here and here . A protest called by Unite the Union as part of its “Unite for a Workers' Economy” campaign drew around 200 people outside the Scottish Power offices in Glasgow on the last Friday in September. Protesting about rocketing energy prices is better than not protesting. And had it not been for the torrential rain, the turnout would probably have been higher. But the “Unite for a Workers' Economy” effort is not a good start on the broader working-class campaign that we need to support, augment, spread, and build on the current strike...

Part of the striking Liverpool dockers' protest outside Labour conference 2022. Bizarrely, the Unite delegation to the conference did not visit the dockers, even when they came to the conference centre Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has rightly criticised Keir Starmer’s record and politics. But the approach advocated by her and many around her in the union is politically passive and conservative , using Starmer and the Labour Party’s failings as a justification for political disengagement and inactivity instead of struggle. Unite’s performance at the 2022 Labour Party conference (24-28...

The nineteen (albeit scattered) days of strikes planned by postal workers; outsourced healthcare workers in Lancashire striking for thirteen days from 27 September; the indefinite strike planned by housing repair workers in Barnet from 17 October; and other sustained strikes show a good way forward for the continuing strike wave. The pace of action maintained by the rail unions in their national dispute, consisting of 24 or 48 hours of action at a time, with gaps of weeks between rounds of action, is becoming more an exception than the norm. In all disputes, the question from which all...

Striking Liverpool dockers protesting at the conference. Their union Unite's failure to make much of this protest or mobilise support for it is indicative of a wider political passivity The author first wrote a much shorter summary for Labour Left Internationalists, which he then expanded for this report: see here . Shortly before Labour Party conference (24-28 September 2022, Liverpool), we asked "Will the unions rebuke Starmer?" Despite the class struggles raging with increasing intensity, they didn't , leaving the Labour leadership's trajectory largely unchallenged. Keir Starmer’s...