The Blairite plot against the unions

Submitted by Matthew on 17 July, 2013 - 10:53

Let’s be clear — the shift from opt-out to opt-in is what the Tories have long wanted, and what [Labour’s right-wing faction] Progress have campaigned for inside the party. The Tories wanted it because it will damage the party’s finances, and weaken the party.

And Progress want it because they want to eliminate union influence on the party, and they have no interest in challenging class-based inequalities of wealth and power. Whatever took place in Falkirk doesn’t begin to justify it.

The contents of the secret report into what happened in Falkirk have now been revealed. According to Seumas Milne:

“The most significant allegations are that a handful of members were signed up without their knowledge (by family members), and that ‘there are discrepancies in the signatures’ of four others (suggesting some may have been forged)”.

It isn’t right to sign up family members to a political party without their knowledge but it undoubtedly happens in every winnable constituency in the country in every party. It clearly isn’t what Unite intended, and you can’t expect Unite’s leaders to have been aware that it happened.

Nor is it right to “forge” signatures but, if the person concerned wanted and intended to join the party, it isn’t “serious wrongdoing” . This is the action of one or two individuals rather than Unite and it certainly isn’t something to waste police time over.

So we can now see why Unite centrally had no idea what they had done wrong. And what was done wrong certainly doesn’t justify the biggest-ever shake up of the party-union relationship by a Labour leader.

No mention was made about the actions of the Progress-backed contender to be Labour’s candidate in Falkirk, Greg Poynton, who in June 2012 according to Michael Crick on C4 News: “recruited 11 new members and submitted a cheque for £130 to pay for their subscriptions. The report does not criticise or condemn Mr Poynton for this, simply because nobody complained about his activity. And Mr Poynton was not contacted by the inquiry to respond... Mr Poynton is married to the MP Gemma Doyle, and Ms Doyle is a member of Jim Murphy’s defence team”.

This is not good enough. The party has a responsibility to act fairly and transparently in the eyes of its members, not merely quickly and decisively in order to appease a hostile media.

The changes have been announced as if they were a decision. ”Here are the first, concrete steps I am taking”, said Ed in his email to party members about the plans, which (according to the BBC’s Nick Robinson) were made with the threat of disaffiliating unions who do not comply. A decision at conference in September, no doubt, on a take it or leave it basis, just like Refounding Labour, without real discussion on any of the detail. And the devil is in the detail.

Ed says: “I want a mass membership party not of 200,000 but of many more”. In his speech he says “with this change I invite you to be at the centre of what this Party does, day in day out, at local level.” So does that mean with equal rights and status as individual members, able to participate in selections and internal elections as do individual members?

Would these members continue to be represented at a regional and national level through their unions? Would Len McCluskey, Paul Kenny and other general secretaries continue to lead delegations at Labour’s conference in an affiliates section that still held 50% of the votes? Would the affiliated sections of Labour’s executive and national policy forum remain as at present?

The numbers of affiliated members will plummet. The party will lose much of its revenue.

Unfortunately, Labour’s stock is not very high with union members. That is a large part of Labour’s problem. It became too distant from its core voters under New Labour, and in spite of Ed Miliband’s commitment to change, not enough has been done to reconnect since.

That is why Unite and other unions have found it so difficult to recruit to Labour. Unite’s political strategy was to recruit 5,000 members in a year and it has actually managed a tiny fraction of that, Falkirk notwithstanding.

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