Labour Party

At its 2012 policy conference, the Unite union ratified a strategy from its Executive for changing the basis on which the union relates to the Labour Party. Dave Quayle, Chair of Unite’s National Political Committee, spoke to Solidarity about what that strategy means for working-class political representation. The consensus in the union was very much that if we were going to remain part of the Labour Party, the relationship had to change. We give millions of pounds to a party we have little control over, and we get nothing back. The Labour Party in government did absolutely nothing for the...

In the Guardian of 26 June, Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil service union, declared that "Labour should be leading the defence of our welfare state... and arguing for... a real living wage, rent controls, a massive programme of housebuilding, and jobs. The unions have been doing this, but we shouldn't have to do it alone". The thought is reasonable, but out of kilter with what Serwotka, in unison with the Socialist Party which politically dominates his union's leadership, has argued for some time. The SP reckons that Labour became a through-and-through bourgeois party at...

About a hundred people gathered in London on Saturday [7 July] to determine the future of Labour Briefing, whether it should remain an independent magazine or become the house journal of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) of which John McDonnell is the chair. It decided, by 44 to 37 votes with a few abstentions, to go with the LRC. Although the debate was surprisingly cordial and everyone behaved well on the day, it was an old fashioned faction-fight with people on both sides seething with anger and bitterness. London Labour Briefing, as it was called at its inception, arose as the...

Five years ago, the demand for the public ownership of the banks was the preserve of a small minority of socialists. Today it follows logically from the exposed venality of the banking system. There have now been three waves of banking failure in the recent past. Socialists should use these events to argue relentlessly for state ownership and democratic control of the banking system. First the advent of neoliberalism from the 1970s was premised on the renewed role of finance capital. Finance capital became in Lenin’s words “the typical ruler of the world”. It was “a power that is peculiarly...

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...

Labour movement activists are organising a lobby of Labour Party conference at the end of September to demand Labour commits to reversing the Tories’ NHS “reforms” and rebuilding our health services. As the Tories’ NHS Health and Social Care Act and their cuts are implemented, there will be numerous local struggles — to stop closures, defend services and resist the expansion of privatisation. Such struggles are vital; they are the essential material from which a more powerful movement to defend the NHS will be built. At the same time, we cannot defend the health service piecemeal. We need to...

Ed Miliband had said that on immigration the Labour Party needed to make a break with its record in government. He claims the problem is that New Labour failed to impose sufficient controls. In fact they imposed too many. In 2004, New Labour oversaw 1,098 “successful operations” (i.e. raids) against undocumented migrant workers, which saw the arrest of over 3,000 workers, but the prosecution of only eight of the employers responsible for exploiting them. In 2003, only one boss was successfully prosecuted, while 1,779 workers were arrested and removed from the workplace (and presumably deported...

On 23 and 24 June 2012, Young Labour held its annual conference in Newcastle. There were over 200 people in attendance, predominantly university students but with noticeable groups of workers and trade unionists, and some under 18s (who won a debate about the extension of the vote to 16 year olds). The Labour Representation Committee was the largest grouping present, and gave out bulletins on both days, organised fringe meetings, and spoke successfully on many left-wing motions. The priority campaign decided by the conference was youth homelessness. In workshops and a plenary session, the...

A motion at GMB congress which called for the union’s national political officer to “monitor” the activity of Progress, a Blairite pressure group within the Labour Party, has received significant coverage. Some claim that the motion amounts to a call for the Labour Party leadership to ban Progress in the way that Militant, Socialist Organiser, and other left groups were banned in the 1980s and early 90s. In fact the text of the motion simply calls blandly for “unity” within the Labour Party and contains no calls for proscription, but some GMB figures — including general secretary Paul Kenny —...

An article in the Financial Times (5 June) argues that the Labour leadership has stepped back to its old line on cuts. From 2010 to late 2011, the Labour message was broadly to oppose the Tories' cuts while conceding that a Labour government would also make cuts, but slower and smaller. In early 2012, a string of declarations by Labour front-benchers - Jim Murphy, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband - inverted the balance. The message became that Labour backed many of the Tories' cuts, and would not promise to reverse any of them, but criticised the detail of the cuts (too far, too fast, etc.) Labour front...