Keep Labour's union link and democratise it

Submitted by Matthew on 17 July, 2013 - 10:44

On 9 July Labour leader Ed Miliband proposed that the link between unions and the Labour Party be reorganised so that individual union members must “opt in” to Labour affiliation.

“Opting-in” seems speciously democratic. But really it enlists pressures from the billionaire press, and all the built-in biases of capitalist society, against collective working-class intervention in politics; and immediately it threatens to break up unions’ political action.

Despite what Ed Miliband and the press say, no individual is “automatically” affiliated to Labour now. Unions decide affiliation to Labour, or not, in the same way as all their other affiliations, by conference debates. Every individual trade unionist can opt of the collective decision by opting not to pay in to the political fund.

There are collective union decisions, and collective union representation in the Labour Party.

The Labour Party has always been different from parties which only have individual members. In fact, before 1918 Labour had no individual members at all. You could be part of the Labour Party only by being a member of an organisation affiliated to Labour.

The purpose of the Labour Party’s founders was to muster the collective resources of the working class, a class which lacks the individuals who can sustain a big party through individual donations, so as to create a collective working-class counterweight in politics to the parties funded and run by the rich.

For the Labour Party to work properly for that purpose, the working-class organisations which underpin it must be democratic, and they must democratically control the politicians. The movement has never been that democratic. Since Blair it falls short more than ever.

The answer is to fight to democratise the organisations and the link — to fight, if necessary, through to an open break with the middle-class Labour politicians who refuse to accept accountability to the working class, and to the creation of a “real” party of labour by way of a fight within the real labour movement, not by the hiving-off and self-proclamation of a small minority.

That fight requires the self-organisation of revolutionary socialists into a coherent collective which argues systematically within the labour movement for democracy and for class-struggle policies, and which finds ways to get its ideas across even when Labour officials try to suppress them. But that collective operates within the labour movement, to transform it, not as a group building “its own” little labour movement alongside the one produced by history so far.

Collective union decisions to affiliate to Labour mean that union members who are apathetic or unsure contribute, by default, a tad to the collective effort. Is that undemocratic? No: in a class society, democracy is essentially measured by whether the openings are broader or narrower for the exploited class, those starved of income and leisure and trained to “know their place”, to intervene.

Suppose every individual’s union membership lapsed next year unless, against a headwind of anti-union media agitation, she or he personally signed a form to “opt in” to continuing. Everyone who failed to sign, from inertia, confusion, unsureness, whatever, would be counted “out”. Union membership would plummet. Democracy would wither.

Suppose that when unions affiliate to other bodies — the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, or War on Want, or No Sweat, or whatever — they could pay money over only as and when individuals had signed forms for part of their dues to go to that specific campaign. Campaigns which require union money to make headway would wither. Individual activism would shrivel, not expand.

Before 1909, it was simply a collective decision by unions whether to affiliate to the Labour Party. If the union decided, then it paid to the Labour Party out of collective funds and gained collective representation within the Labour Party. That’s all.

A 1909 court ruling, the Osborne Judgement, made all union donations to Labour illegal. The Liberal government of the day needed Labour support in parliament, so passed a law in 1913 to make union political funds legal as long as individuals could opt out.

In 1927 the Tories passed a law to make payments to all union political funds (Labour or not) illegal unless individuals opted in. In 1946 the Labour government returned the law to “opt-out”.

In 1927 the Tories introduced a law that workers could pay into union political funds only if they individually “opted in”, instead of failing to “opt out”.

Labour Party affiliated membership fell from 3.2 million in 1927 to 2.0 million in 1928. That was a big fall, but limited because the labour movement had hundreds of thousands of activists formed in the battles of the 1920s, was responding to an obviously vindictive Tory measure, and had a Labour Party more union-friendly and less discredited than today.

Since 1993 Unison members can opt to pay into Labour Party affiliation or into a non-Labour political fund. 31% are Labour levy-payers.

The sideswipe from that Unison system is that Unison’s political decisions are supposed to be taken not by the regular union conferences and structures, but by a parallel and inaccessible system of APF committees and conferences. That insulates the top officials from democratic pressure on political questions.

“Opting-in” now is likely to produce a percentage of trade unionists affiliated to the Labour Party more like the 7.5% who cast non-spoiled ballots in Labour’s 2010 leadership vote.

Unison’s 31% is unlikely to be reached because it depends on members who came from Nupe and Cohse into the merger which created Unison and were by default enlisted as “opting-in” if they didn’t object (while those who came from Nalgo were by default “opted out”). Many new Unison members tick neither “in” nor “out” on their form, and are then allocated by Unison offices in line with existing proportions.

Miliband seems to propose a system where those who tick neither “in” nor “out” are “out”.

Unite got an 87% majority on a 19% turnout to keep its political fund in a ballot in May 2013. Unions got bigger turnouts, more like 50%, in the political fund ballots forced on them by the Tories in 1984-6.

More than 7.5% could be got “in” now if union leaders campaigned properly, mobilising members in an effort to win working-class policies. But the actual leaders are deficient in both will and capacity to do that.

The immediate effect of “opt-in” might be to reduce the flow of union money to the Labour Party which is affiliation fees, but increase the flow of union money which is grace-and-favour donations decided by union leaders.

But that change, in turn, would generate very heavy pressure to cut the union share of the vote at Labour Party conference, and probably also pressure to end the system of union branch delegates to Constituency Labour Party committees.

Blairites: politics and money

The Tories and the Labour right decry Labour getting money from the unions, though the process is highly visible and open to regulation or change by union conferences.

The Tories get their money more murkily, from companies and the rich. So does Labour’s right.

Labour’s hard-Blairite faction Progress has been given about £2 million by Lord David Sainsbury, and hundreds of thousands by other plutocrats. Sainsbury continues to fund Progress at the rate of £260,000 a year. He used to give money to the Labour Party, but stopped when Ed Miliband became Labour leader.

The Blairites look to the rich to fund politics... and they look to politics to make them rich.

Since being prime minister, Tony Blair has become a multi-millionaire. He is not paid for his post as representative of the “Quartet” (USA, UN, EU, Russia) in the Middle East. However, while achieving nothing in that post for peace in Israel-Palestine, he has used it to get lucrative contacts and contracts in the Middle East.

His chief activity in Palestine has been successful lobbying on behalf of a Palestinian mobile phone company to get the Israeli government to allot it some wavelengths (previously reserved by another Palestinian mobile phone company, which had bribed the Israeli government to keep its monopoly).

Blair has also won close links with the monarchy in Qatar, and contracts:

to provide advice and publicity to the monarchy in Kuwait.

to advise the Abu Dhabi monarchy’s investment fund.

Outside the Middle East, Blair’s money-making includes contracts:

to puff the government of Kazakhstan and advise it on “good governance”.

to advise Mongolia’s leaders on “good governance”.

to advise the Chinese government’s foreign-investments fund,

to advise a South Korean oil firm.

to advise J P Morgan and Zurich Insurance (who paid him £630,000 for one hour’s work on one deal).

to advise the Colombian government.

to advise the state government of Sao Paulo.

There are probably more. Blair’s empire is opaque. Its office (in a posh building in Mayfair, London) employs 200 staff, and he plans to expand that to 500.

Blair is only the most successful of the Blairites at converting money into politics and politics into money. Patricia Hewitt, soon after being health minister (2005-7), cashed in with a job as a “consultant” for Alliance Boots Holdings Limited.She is also a adviser for the private-equity firm Cinven, a director of BT and of Eurotunnel, and chair of the UK India Business Council.

John Hutton moved straight from being defence minister to a well-paid job for a US nuclear power company, Hyperion.

He then did the Tories’ dirty work, designing the public sector pension cuts, and now lists the following paid jobs: adviser, Eversheds law firm; chair, Nuclear Industries Association; adviser, Bechtel Corporation; chair, MyCSP Ltd; advisory director, Dimensional Fund Advisors; adviser, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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