Unions & politics

Trade Unions and politics

Stop the Tories running amok

The government is under attack from the Tory right wing for being too “soft” on immigration and on Brexit. Probably the critics are setting out their stall for a Tory leadership contest after the next general election. The big fact for the labour movement is that this Tory government is already very right-wing even on the Tory scale, and feels itself under as much pressure from the further-right as from the labour movement and the left. Sunak has always been on the Tory right. The government is pushing back against pay demands harder than private employers, and putting through a concentrated...

The drivel of comrade Blimp

Doug Nicholls is Britain’s longest-serving union bureaucrat, but his name will mean nothing to most rank and file union activists

Unions: pull Starmer into line!

Through Labour’s National Policy Forum in July and the Labour Party conference, 8-11 October in Liverpool, Solidarity will be pressing for activists to organise in unions and local Labour Parties to call Keir Starmer to account. The Labour leaders’ draft programme, the National Policy Forum report released on 11 May, sets up two barriers against making reality of its bland and blurred talk of social advance. It defines everything as having to be done in concert with or for the benefit of “business”. “We will make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business by making the...

Assessing the strike wave and the state of the unions

The ongoing strike wave is the most significant upsurge in workers’ struggle for a generation, and represents the reappearance of organised labour as a visible social force. For us, as people whose politics proceed from the belief that the organised working class is the primary agent of social change, the strike wave therefore has special importance. Whilst we should relate soberly to the wave, we also have a responsibility to celebrate it. We should be the last people to declare the wave “over”, or an inevitable slide towards defeat. As an organised revolutionary socialist collective within...

Worker solidarity against apartheid

In 1984 the Irish Adminstrative and Distributive Trade Union (IDATU) passed policy for a boycott of South African goods. They instructed their members not to handle goods produced in the state, which from 1948 to 1994 mandated white-black segregation (apartheid). A young shop assistant Mary Manning, refused to serve a customer a grapefruit in Dunnes stores in Dublin. Result: an almost three-year strike, first against her suspension and then for the Irish government to boycott South African goods. Strike! , at Southwark Playhouse until 6 May tells the story of the young women and one man who...

STUC backs Ukraine solidarity

The 17-19 April Scottish TUC congress overwhelmingly rejected a composite motion on Ukraine backing the line taken by the Morning Star and the Stop the War Coalition: blame NATO for the war; accuse NATO of escalation; and make vacuous calls for negotiations. Instead, congress backed a statement issued by the General Council which “rejected any suggestion of equivalence between the invader and the invaded” and expressed solidarity with Ukrainian trade unions, including their participation in the military resistance to the invasion. Arms The statement did not explicitly advocate (increased) arms...

A workers' plan to shut down oilfields

North Sea oil workers have done something that no government or fossil fuel company has even attempted: they have devised a plan for shutting down the oil fields and transitioning to renewable energy. The Our Power report has emerged from a coalition of environmental groups and trade unions working closely with offshore workers. The plan involves investment in retraining and infrastructure so that oil rigs can be decommissioned in the UK and we can build the wind and marine energy we need for the future. The collaboration between workers and environmentalists started with a survey organised by...

Motions to Unite policy conference

Unite the Union’s policy conference takes place in Brighton, 11-14 July 2023. It’s immediately preceded by its rules revision conference (9-10 July), motions at which may include proposals for disaffiliation from the Labour Party – but they haven’t been published yet. However the motions to policy conference have been. Here are some highlights. The deadline for amendments (each branch, etc, can amend one motion) is 21 April. The full motions document from which the page references below are taken is here . Strike strategy There’s not a lot of motions about strike or broader industrial strategy...

Oust the Tories! Make unions turn Labour round!

Lee Anderson. Suella Braverman. The Tories are likely to lose a general election in 2024, but their response is not to soften their line. On the contrary. They are rushing to push through as much as they can: Public Order Bill, Minimum Service law, EU regulations bonfire, Rwanda plan, block on Scotland’s gender-recognition law. They do that both because they want the measures through in the limited time they have, and to rally their political base. The government is being more stubborn than private employers about making real wages and public services bear the brunt of the economic downturn...

Unison sinks strike support at London Labour conference

At London Labour Party conference (28-29 January), the Starmerite leadership / machine let a series of leftish motions go through without opposition. The motion where they decided to fight was one supporting strikes and calling on the whole party, including elected representatives, to do so. That motion ( page 7 of motions document ) was defeated by just over 1% – 49.4 to 50.6%. It was defeated because Labour’s biggest affiliated union, Unison, actively opposed it. I haven’t checked the exact figures, but Union's delegation probably represents something like 15% of the conference. If Unison...

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