The Labour leadership battle has already moved into one of the
'Dark places' that Labour Party MP Jon Cruddas perceptively judged the party will need to explore.
Facing the fact that many, perhaps most Scottish members of Britain's largest union Unite voted for the SNP and against Labour, Unite leader, Len McLuskey has said that the union's policy of affiliation to the Labour Party might need to be reviewed, and would be, in any case, up for discussion at the coming annual conference of the union. He added
'The party needed to prove it was the “voice of organised labour” or else the “pressure will grow” for Unite to rethink its affiliation.' - (Politics Home, May 18.)
McLuskey is using his coming union debate in an attempt to exert his own pressure on Labour's leadership candidates towards a more pro union stance - and away from the resurrection of Blairism. In reality it is extremely unlikely that the Unite conference will overturn the union's traditional position on Labour affiliation. Indeed, speaking on BBC Radio Four's World at One (May 18), Mr McCluskey rubbished his own previous threats
'Some of the stuff the media writes is frankly daft. This idea that we're considering disaffiliating from the Labour Party is nonsense, we're not considering that at all.' You can fool some of the people ...
McLuskey knows, and always has known that - with the exception of a Scottish minority - most delegates to the conference who have strong views about affiliation to Labour will share the traditional outlooks of the Labour left and the Morning Star (the paper that reflects the views of Britain's tiny British Communist Party). In that world disaffiliation from Labour would be seen as a mortal sin and characterised as 'dividing the labour movement.'
Nevertheless, Mcluskey's initial comments brought down a storm of criticism from all quarters. It was enough to cause him to retreat immediately (as usual) but the door he opened will not close. And among the angry noise there was a key point made about the future of Labour by Labour peer Margaret Prosser, a former union leader in the Transport and General Workers Union, forerunner of Unite and Labour treasurer, who said it was
'Completely silly' of Mcluskey just to focus on organised labour, as she believed he had done.
'The idea that the whole focus of Labour's proposal or offer ought to be around organised labour is just daft,' she said.
'We have to be able to say that the government, a Labour government is going to be there for all kinds of people.' Although her intention was to shut down the argument about organised working class influence on Labour policy she inadvertently but sharply revealed the impasse that paralyses the modern Labour Party - including every one of its prospective leadership candidates so far. All of them already say that the party was not pro-business enough in the last 4 years, that it should support the EU referendum, continue with austerity, stand for 'aspiration' and recognise that Labour overspent before the last election.
How on earth can the Labour Party be 'reduced' to or even 'mainly be' the voice of the organised working class? That is what Margaret Prosser is asking. The organised workers account for 26% of all workers in Britain. That means that 74% of people who are economically active are not connected with unions. The Labour Party will always lose elections if it only, or even mainly relies on, or just seeks to represent, union members - goes the argument. This was the material essence of the New Labour set of ideas. All the self styled 'middle way' ideology adopted by Blair and co., rested on demographic facts like these. The Western European working class, in this utterly superficial view of reality, was dissolving into what US Presidents have called since the 1940s the American middle class. And the middle class are not collective by instinct. They want themselves and their families to be rich!
'The party needed to prove it was the “voice of organised labour” or else the “pressure will grow” for Unite to rethink its affiliation.' - (Politics Home, May 18.)
McLuskey is using his coming union debate in an attempt to exert his own pressure on Labour's leadership candidates towards a more pro union stance - and away from the resurrection of Blairism. In reality it is extremely unlikely that the Unite conference will overturn the union's traditional position on Labour affiliation. Indeed, speaking on BBC Radio Four's World at One (May 18), Mr McCluskey rubbished his own previous threats
'Some of the stuff the media writes is frankly daft. This idea that we're considering disaffiliating from the Labour Party is nonsense, we're not considering that at all.' You can fool some of the people ...
McLuskey knows, and always has known that - with the exception of a Scottish minority - most delegates to the conference who have strong views about affiliation to Labour will share the traditional outlooks of the Labour left and the Morning Star (the paper that reflects the views of Britain's tiny British Communist Party). In that world disaffiliation from Labour would be seen as a mortal sin and characterised as 'dividing the labour movement.'
Nevertheless, Mcluskey's initial comments brought down a storm of criticism from all quarters. It was enough to cause him to retreat immediately (as usual) but the door he opened will not close. And among the angry noise there was a key point made about the future of Labour by Labour peer Margaret Prosser, a former union leader in the Transport and General Workers Union, forerunner of Unite and Labour treasurer, who said it was
'Completely silly' of Mcluskey just to focus on organised labour, as she believed he had done.
'The idea that the whole focus of Labour's proposal or offer ought to be around organised labour is just daft,' she said.
'We have to be able to say that the government, a Labour government is going to be there for all kinds of people.' Although her intention was to shut down the argument about organised working class influence on Labour policy she inadvertently but sharply revealed the impasse that paralyses the modern Labour Party - including every one of its prospective leadership candidates so far. All of them already say that the party was not pro-business enough in the last 4 years, that it should support the EU referendum, continue with austerity, stand for 'aspiration' and recognise that Labour overspent before the last election.
How on earth can the Labour Party be 'reduced' to or even 'mainly be' the voice of the organised working class? That is what Margaret Prosser is asking. The organised workers account for 26% of all workers in Britain. That means that 74% of people who are economically active are not connected with unions. The Labour Party will always lose elections if it only, or even mainly relies on, or just seeks to represent, union members - goes the argument. This was the material essence of the New Labour set of ideas. All the self styled 'middle way' ideology adopted by Blair and co., rested on demographic facts like these. The Western European working class, in this utterly superficial view of reality, was dissolving into what US Presidents have called since the 1940s the American middle class. And the middle class are not collective by instinct. They want themselves and their families to be rich!
McLuskey offers no answer to any of this. Today he stands by affiliation to Labour not because within the framework of the Labour Party he can answer Margaret Prosser's challenge, or confront politically Labour's leadership candidates on their lurch rightwards. His only riposte to the new Blairites is that a million plus Scots voted for a different party who stood to the left of Labour! It is not the most obvious step from there to support affiliation to Labour and then promote one of its emergent pro-austerity leaders - whoever they are - as the Unite leadership inevitably will.
Returning to the Blairite thesis, because this sort of thinking was so limited in its scope and, at the same time, totally depended on identification with a notion of successful 'trickle down' capitalism, the ten years of Labour's Blairism pushed the Labour Party into an historic cul de sac that has proved disastrous for Labour in the longer term and which has now come to threaten its very existence. There has been no 'trickle down' since the term was invented in Reagan's US in the 1980s. The crisis of 2008 has simply accelerated further the 25 year gap between rich and and the rest. And while the content of employment has changed, work attracts less and less return whilst the social wage is also being dismantled. Result? Labour's rank failure to stop the rot when in government; and so now we see In Labour's heartlands that abstention has started to shift en mass, to desertion.
Neither the traditional left of Labour, nor its right wing are able to reverse the 'hollowing out' now going in British Social Democracy. None of this is the same as saying that Britain's political crisis does not embrace ruling class politics. On the contrary. But the decline of British social democracy as has been argued in previous blogs, is currently the sharpest aspect of great changes unfolding in British politics in general.
What then should the left unions do now?
Let's start at the beginning. If the 1945 Attlee government was the pinnacle of success of the British Labour Party in the last 115 years, what then was the greatest moment for the British trade unions? Speaking about the role of the whole of the trade union movement it was certainly not 1926 or the Miner's strike of 1985/6. From the point of view of its impact on the whole of society it would be hard to argue against the historic milestone represented by the union's foundation of the Labour Party. When unions founded the Labour Party, calling for working men's representation in Parliament, they amounted to 2 million in 1900, 2 million in 1905 and 4 million by 1914. That is to say 11%, 11% and 20% of the total workforce in Britain in those successive years. (Even in 1945/6 unions only organised 32% of workers.) Today, union activists are used to the terrible comparison made between today's union membership which is only half of what it was at its peak in 1979. (52% of Britain's working population were unionised compared today with only 26% of workers today.) But the 1979 peak of union membership turns out to be the exception to the norm and certainly was not a point where unions led society as a whole.
In countries with a great militant tradition like France, trade union membership has always been (more political) but smaller than in Britain. The leadership for the whole of society that the trade unionists took when they founded the Labour party in Britain was at a relatively weak point, numerically speaking. It is not then the size of the trade union movement that necessarily determines whether or not it can help 'win' most of society to its purpose, it is rather its political culture, determination, policy and its actions.
Trade unions remain the single biggest voluntary organisations in the UK. Surely the question faced today by unions and their members is first how to defend their independence, from another wave of anti-union, anti-democratic laws, second from political organisation that does not represent them or, for that matter, any of the new working class. Of course unions should disaffiliate from Labour. (They could donate funds to parties for specific purposes should their members want.) And unions could then begin the fight for the new representation of the new working class in Britain, that Parliament has not represented for decades, authoritative working class candidate by working class candidate if necessary.
Trade unions remain defencive organisations, but it is what they defend that catches or misses the moment. Defence of Britain's democracy by rebuilding it, electorally, for ordinary people; defence of the new working class in society by battling for the Living Wage and a maximum wage, defence of the social wage, helping to sponsor a peoples' bank for lone and family workers and for growth, full time children's care for all, and defence of the union from the government's attack on democracy - will make unions heard across a wounded and confused society.
Re centring a new working class; such a union movement would echo their great forbears and begin the political process of once again calling together those who begin to know that we need a new type of society.
Returning to the Blairite thesis, because this sort of thinking was so limited in its scope and, at the same time, totally depended on identification with a notion of successful 'trickle down' capitalism, the ten years of Labour's Blairism pushed the Labour Party into an historic cul de sac that has proved disastrous for Labour in the longer term and which has now come to threaten its very existence. There has been no 'trickle down' since the term was invented in Reagan's US in the 1980s. The crisis of 2008 has simply accelerated further the 25 year gap between rich and and the rest. And while the content of employment has changed, work attracts less and less return whilst the social wage is also being dismantled. Result? Labour's rank failure to stop the rot when in government; and so now we see In Labour's heartlands that abstention has started to shift en mass, to desertion.
Neither the traditional left of Labour, nor its right wing are able to reverse the 'hollowing out' now going in British Social Democracy. None of this is the same as saying that Britain's political crisis does not embrace ruling class politics. On the contrary. But the decline of British social democracy as has been argued in previous blogs, is currently the sharpest aspect of great changes unfolding in British politics in general.
What then should the left unions do now?
Let's start at the beginning. If the 1945 Attlee government was the pinnacle of success of the British Labour Party in the last 115 years, what then was the greatest moment for the British trade unions? Speaking about the role of the whole of the trade union movement it was certainly not 1926 or the Miner's strike of 1985/6. From the point of view of its impact on the whole of society it would be hard to argue against the historic milestone represented by the union's foundation of the Labour Party. When unions founded the Labour Party, calling for working men's representation in Parliament, they amounted to 2 million in 1900, 2 million in 1905 and 4 million by 1914. That is to say 11%, 11% and 20% of the total workforce in Britain in those successive years. (Even in 1945/6 unions only organised 32% of workers.) Today, union activists are used to the terrible comparison made between today's union membership which is only half of what it was at its peak in 1979. (52% of Britain's working population were unionised compared today with only 26% of workers today.) But the 1979 peak of union membership turns out to be the exception to the norm and certainly was not a point where unions led society as a whole.
In countries with a great militant tradition like France, trade union membership has always been (more political) but smaller than in Britain. The leadership for the whole of society that the trade unionists took when they founded the Labour party in Britain was at a relatively weak point, numerically speaking. It is not then the size of the trade union movement that necessarily determines whether or not it can help 'win' most of society to its purpose, it is rather its political culture, determination, policy and its actions.
Trade unions remain the single biggest voluntary organisations in the UK. Surely the question faced today by unions and their members is first how to defend their independence, from another wave of anti-union, anti-democratic laws, second from political organisation that does not represent them or, for that matter, any of the new working class. Of course unions should disaffiliate from Labour. (They could donate funds to parties for specific purposes should their members want.) And unions could then begin the fight for the new representation of the new working class in Britain, that Parliament has not represented for decades, authoritative working class candidate by working class candidate if necessary.
Trade unions remain defencive organisations, but it is what they defend that catches or misses the moment. Defence of Britain's democracy by rebuilding it, electorally, for ordinary people; defence of the new working class in society by battling for the Living Wage and a maximum wage, defence of the social wage, helping to sponsor a peoples' bank for lone and family workers and for growth, full time children's care for all, and defence of the union from the government's attack on democracy - will make unions heard across a wounded and confused society.
Re centring a new working class; such a union movement would echo their great forbears and begin the political process of once again calling together those who begin to know that we need a new type of society.
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