GMB Cuts Labour Funds: What Should the Left Say?
The following article was written by Matt Hale of Sheffield Left Unity with the intention of initiating a debate among Left Unity supporters regards our attitude towards the union-Labour link.
News that the GMB union is to slash the affiliation fees it gives to the Labour Party from £1.2million to £150,000 and disaffiliate 50,000 members has sparked interest across the sections of the working-class movement. The background to which is the Falkirk West fallout and Labour leaders failure to present any alternative to austerity politics.
Yet rather than begin to address the crisis of working-class representation that continues to plight British politics, the GMB Executive has accepted and effectively implemented Miliband’s proposed reforms before members have even had the opportunity to properly discuss either them or alternatives that are beginning to arise from some quarters. By disenfranchising members, the union has bought the argument about opt-in versus opt-out and potentially sacrificed its capacity to possess a collective political voice.
On the socialist left, it appears that the news has generally been welcomed as somehow a step-forward.
Not usually one to rush to defend Labour, it is a misreading of history to simply lay blame for Labour’s degeneration and the crisis of working-class politics solely at the feet of party leaders. It is to ignore union complicity that has too often been characteristic. Embedded within is a ‘left posturing’ that sidelines the capacities or importance of trade unionists involving themselves politically and likens the union-Labour link to that between Conservative and business interests.
It is true that Labour has faced a programmatic and internal degeneration that has moved it ever closer towards the bourgeois pole of politics, yet organisationally it remains a workers’ party and the unions continue to be occupy a central role within Labour structures. The problem is that over the years, union leaders have either not taken political strategy seriously, largely abstaining themselves of responsibility – or worse they have been complicit in moves towards to the right in rejection of their own existing policies.
For example, it was only once during the Blair-Brown years – in 2005 – that attempts were made to move motions at Labour conference that advocated reforms to the hated anti-union legislation brought in by Thatcher. While passed, there was barely a squeak to push for implementation from union leaders, and like other official party policy, has been allowed to simply slip into history.
Again in the run-up to the Iraq war, union representatives on the party NEC ignored mandated policy and voted against a motion opposing invasion. Among these, there are countless other examples that can be cited.
Even withstanding this and the fact Labour has been emptied of any real accountability with policy decisions emerging from Parliamentary leadership via the airwaves in an almost Presidential style, unions continue to (potentially) hold a significant influence should the leaderships actually decide to fight for their policies and should individual political funds be democratised to the benefit of rank-and-file members. While in the past unions held 90% of the casting votes at Labour conferences, they now, still, hold 40%.
If GMB – and other unions – were serious about maximising their members’ interests they would seek to intervene themselves both industrially and politically. Regarding this contribution, it means encouraging more branches to send delegates to Constituent Labour Parties and ensuring their policies are fought for, as well as developing a strategy to commit Labour politicians to decisions made by conference.
While the current set-up isn’t ideal, we are where we are and the circumstances in which unions disaffiliate does matter. The example of the FBU – the only union I’m aware of having disaffiliated – is that their exit from in 2004 served to depoliticise the union, reducing it just supporting left-wing causes.
Against ‘left posturing’ though its important to revive a debate on what we mean by working-class representation. For while Labour may not be the vehicle to advance our interests within the political sphere, to liken them organisationally to the Conservatives is to misunderstand. Labour remains a workers party, albeit a highly degenerated one with a bourgeois leadership, because of the organic link it has with millions of organised workers via the trade unions. Unlike the Conservatives, it finds its traditional support base among society’s workers. Even withstanding the failure of Miliband to offer any kind of real alternative to austerity politics, we can trust that at the next election, Labour will once again benefit from the grit-teeth allegiance of working-class voters and the capacity of the trade-union bureaucracy to foster illusions in it.
None of this is to discard the need to build new independent socialist organisation. To state Labour remains a workers’ party helps to recast the debate on what type of organisation we aim to build. Is our aspiration to gradually replace Labour by the production of a more broadly left-wing programme or do we aim to be rooted in working-class struggle and organise at the rank-and-file of the trade union movement as opposed to building a relationship with the trade union bureaucracy that almost consistently compromises those same fights?
To counterpose building independent socialist organisation against waging a fight inside the Labour Party is not particularly useful. It is to reduce the capacity of trade unionists to engage politically, and to further reduce the union-Labour link as just a relationship between leaderships, discarding the rank-and-file of the millions strong trade-union movement.
Important is where we find ourselves in an affiliated union getting it to wage a fight inside Labour Party structures, not because we believe it can be reclaimed but because defending union funding and policies is part of the same fight as developing a democratised political strategy that empowers rank-and-file trade unionists. It also means (as is happening) beginning to build the foundations of a new socialist organisation that can give leadership to struggle wherever it arises. That is the role Left Unity can potentially play.
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14 responses to “GMB Cuts Labour Funds: What Should the Left Say?”
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What a strange article ! With all your caveats you still think that :
“Labour remains a workers party, albeit a highly degenerated one with a bourgeois leadership, because of the organic link it has with millions of organised workers via the trade unions”.
and
“where we find ourselves in an affiliated union getting it to wage a fight inside Labour Party structures, not because we believe it can be reclaimed but because defending union funding and policies is part of the same fight as developing a democratised political strategy that empowers rank-and-file trade unionists”
I really don’t think you really “get” the central thesis of the Left Unity “project” , Matt, ie, that New Labour is no longer in any way a “workers party”, and cannot be “forced Leftwards” by trade union or member pressure.
New Labour is no more a “workers party” than are the Democrats in the USA. Both draw large votes from the working class- but both are root and branch opportunist bourgeois capitalist parties- wedded entirely to the capitalist status quo . There is no useful progressive role that trade unions or trade unionists can nowadays play to “shift Labour Leftwards”. That is the futile perennial illusion of the labour Left, and some Left-leaning (or posturing) trades union leaders. Supporters of Left Unity should have moved far beyond all that timewasting nonsense. Into the Dustbin of History with the labour Party – and the cutting off of funds from the Trades Unions will speed that long overdue demise. Let Labour get its cash from its real ideological allies and paymasters, Big Business.
Of course most of the trades union leadership are dyed in the wool “labour lieutenants of capitalism”, not radical socialists, so they aren’t going to drop New Labour and look around for a new radical Let party to fund. The end of the old Labour/TU funding link will be a significant step in destroying Labour’s still huge ideological hold over the working class vote – and we may well start to draw some direct support from a few more radically inclined unions. Let Unity shouldn’t be working as another supportive ginger group around the Labour left ,trying to get the Labour leaders to “turn Left . They wont. Ours is an entirely new, much more relevant, political project.
Cutting the funding lets the bureaucrats off the hook. It means they no longer have a mechanism by which they could have influenced policy so that their members will never again ask them to do so. They are preparing the way for a New Labour government that will apply Coalition austerity. They will give up their bloc vote whilst New Labour MPs will consolidate their dictatorship over the party making it look like Conservative Party Mk II where the membership are purely for providing standing ovations at televised conferences. It will be far from the mass party Milliband claims to want but a club of corrupt parliamentarians in the pockets of rich lobbyists. Whilst the trade union heads sit on their hands.
What rank and file trade unionists should demand now in these circumstances is an end to both the bloc vote of the trade unions and the MPs and a mass membership party in which unions encourage their members to participate fully as members along with all other sections of the working class and this membership should be the final decision makers on policy and purpose not union chiefs and MPs.
I was in a factory of 500 people, the Union the GMB asked me to look around at getting a bigger group within Labour,at the time Blair was the man it went like this. 500 people working on the shop floor, 66 were either Tory or liberals, 14 were labour party members. Then the vast majority either said they did not belong to a party did not vote and would not be interested, the laugh was the 14 members of Labour were all shop stewards, the others some said they voted labour but would not join labour.
The factory shut in 2011, out of 400 people left in the factor only three were union members, the problem is neither the Unions or the Labour party any longer speak for the people, Labour has become a party of the swing voter middle England, most people who are working class do not see Labour as being anything else as a bunch of people out to make it for themselves and you know something after 46 years in one Union or another I agree with them.
here is the relevant bit of Ed Milibands TUC Speech
“Unlike Mr Cameron, I am a One Nation politician.
And One Nation is about governing for the whole country.
To do this we are going have to build a new kind of Labour Party.
A new relationship with individual trade union members.
Some people ask: what’s wrong with the current system?
Let me tell them: we have three million working men and women affiliated to our party.
But the vast majority play no role in our party.
They are affiliated in name only.
That wasn’t the vision of the founders of our party.
I don’t think it’s your vision either.
And it’s certainly not my vision.
That’s why I want to make each and every affiliated trade union member a real part of their local party.
Making a real choice to be a part of our party.
So they can have a real voice in it.
And why is that such an exciting idea?
Because it means we could become a Labour party not of 200,000 people, but 500,000 or many more.
A party rooted every kind of workplace in the country.
A party rooted in every community in the country.
A genuine living, breathing movement.
Of course, it is a massive challenge.
It will be a massive challenge for the Labour Party to reach out to your members in a way that we have not done for many years and persuade them to be part of what we do.
And like anything that is hard it is a risk.
But the bigger risk is just saying let’s do it as we have always done it.
It is you who have been telling me year after year about a politics that is detached from the lives of working people.
That’s why we have to have the courage to change.
I respect those who worry about change.
I understand.
But I disagree.
It is the right thing to do.
We can change.
We must change.
And I am absolutely determined this change will happen.
It is the only way we can build a One Nation party.
So we can build a One Nation country.”
I’m mystified. What is a One Nation Country? How does Labour’s ‘One Nation Country’ differ, if at all, from a Cameron ‘Big Society’? In the context of child poverty and growing inequality these slogans to be cut from the same cloth of cynical posturing on the part of two capitalist parties wedded to the corporate state. Miliband’s desire to change the relationship between unions and labour seems to me to be a great opportunity, not only for Left Unity but for all those who want to help build democracy at the local level through community & workplace organisation and mutualism. It’s surely time to look again at the issue of party funding and caps on private donations. I’m excited by the possibilities offered by Left Unity; I’ve just registered and sent off my two quid…
John F. The ‘One Nation’ stuff harks back to Disraeli and the Tory Party in the 19th Century and as a sort of slogan was associated with the pre Thatcher Tory Party under Heath…. It is also clearly a ‘Unionist’ slogan [Not Trade Unionist] and is linked to Miliband and the LP’s de facto opposition to Irish Reunification and opposition to Scottish Independence.
The new party of the Left that we are going to found on November 30th can via a simple constitutional mechanism break decisively with Miliband ‘One Nation’ drivel by making clear our opposition to the UK as a State and establishing separate parties in England Scotland and Wales.
Our new party in England can also include constitutional provision for formal Trade Union Affiliation on the basis proposed in Sean Thompson’s Alternative Draft Constitution. All of our new members who are not currently in a Trade Union can be empowered to join new Trade Union Structures Like UnitetheUnion’s Community Membership Section and argue within Unite for the right to ‘Affilite’ to the new party of the Left and or Unites Political Fund to be used directly to assist and promote the new party of the Left. We still have a long road ahead of us before we build a genuinely mass organisation with clear links with the organised working class via trade unions… but the current debate thrown up in the aftermath of the Falkirk Fiasco and Miliband’s contribution to the TUC today represents a democratic opening we can participate in.
Dearie me, you have completely failed to grasp the core ideological message of New Labour’s “One Nation ” rhetoric . It is actually all about cross class collaboration, not about geographical administrative structures in the UK. Your own obsessions with “nationhood” has misled you again.
have you now given up on Cornwall as a separate “nation” too then , Mark ? Yeh, let’s shackle the operating coherence of a radical new UK Left Party by splitting it up into ever smaller independent “national” entities – tailing the petty bourgeois nationalism of Plaid and the SNP. The modern UK working class objectively has no “nation”, or cross class “national interest” , Mark. Grasp that and you’ll grasp why tailing petty nationalism is a recipe for division and confusion.
The unworkable alternative Constitution (actually a copy of the SSP Constitution) advocated by Sean Thompson would fatally undermine the OMOV principle of open democracy in Left Unity, by making it absurdly easy for any group of organised Lefties to get their poorly attended trades union branch to nominally “affiliate” to Left Unity (a financial contribution per member isn’t even required !), and then turn up at Conference claiming to represent and hold x number of , completely fictional, “trades union affiliate votes . Very Democratic . Some of us have seen it all before.
Well said Paul..
The world is globalised. Small little statelets are unviable and inefficient. So calling for petty nationalism is not a way forward.
Also totally agree that the One Nation drivel is about cross class representation more than national unionism.
I am really pleased with millibands speech as it enforces my belief that labour has lost it’s way down a dark path of no return. He skipped passed austerity never once mentioning ATOS and the plight of the disabled and real long term unemployed and the selling off of the NHS or reinvesting in real social housing as well as many other issues ordinary people face or have. Yes I want a new party, but not like labour ruled by rich kids.and the scared union leaders. Yes to welcoming unionism but not beaurocracy and indecision. I want to see more unions drop funding and eventually join with left unity.
Just to clarify the actual proposal made by Sean Thompson regarding Trade Union ‘Affilitation’ in the alternative constitution he has drafted.
“b) There shall be two types of membership of [Left Unity]:
i. Individual membership as set out in (3a).
ii. Affiliated membership. Bona fide Trade Union bodies, including union branches and district, regional
or national level trade union organisations, may affiliate to the party subject to the approval of
National Conference or the National Council. National Conference shall from time to time
determine the appropriate levels of subscriptions for affiliated unions and the number of delegates
they may send to relevant party bodies, save only that all delegates must be individual party
members and no delegate shall have more than one vote in any circumstances.”
This is clearly different to brother John Penney’s understanding of Sean Thompson’s alternative draft constitutional provisions for Trade Union ‘Affilitation’ and I am happy to clarify any misconceptions.
On the issue that John raises about Cornwall – it is not me that considers Cornwall or ‘Kernow’ a nation but several thousand people in Cornwall who vote for and have elected local Councillors from Meybon Kernow the Left of Centre Cornish ‘nationalist’ Party… At some stage of course supporters of Left Unity will have living in Cornwall will have to engage with this growing political force and the proposals they make.
Mark, you can’t have experienced the hackneyed old ” concocted affiliation and associated voting delegates” scam as often as us older Lefties have, and therefore don’t recognise the dangers to OMOV.
The simple fact is that in the Sean Thompson Constitution a tiny group of Left unity members can get themselves nominally “delegated” from a purely nominally “affiliated” union branch to the delegate-based decision making bodies of the party . When we all know that “branch affiliation” to campaigns and organisations, done on a cold, wet, windy, Friday night at a very poorly attended union branch meeting, usually means NOTHING in terms of real union membership support for the organisation being affiliated to. The usual purpose is just to secure voting “delegate” status for a few lefties who can’t secure this delegate status in an open and transparent manner in an open party branch meeting. Because of course , though the “delegates” may well be full Left Unity members, the claimed “union branch support” for the affiliation itself usually turns out to be a complete fiction.
If there are enough Left Unity members in a union branch/workplace to be a credible group, they should seek to secure “Left Unity Workplace/union Branch” status – and the normal delegate/voting rights of a geographical branch would apply. Many of us have been round the “bogus affiliation and delegates ruse” route too many times not to recognise the dangers – unless very clear conditions and safeguards were set – none of which are provided by Sean’s Constitution.
So you do still think Cornwall is a distinct “nation” , Mark ! That a few delusional sentimental “Kernow” nationalists think so, and a few thousand confused people in total vote for them across a range of elections, does not actually make it so – any more than the even more widespread petty nationalist beliefs of confused people like the EDL are based on objective reality. It’s called “false consciousness” Mark, – sometimes even superficially “radical” and even sometimes “anti capitalist”, but actually reactionary, belief systems which simply produce division and confusion within the wider working class.
Aside from the transparently daft issue of “Cornish Nationalism”, For Left Unity to limit its political ambitions to England , because of the current electoral/ideological success of the petty bourgeois nationalism of Plaid and the SNP is to collaborate in sowing further divisions in the UK working class ,which needs to confront globalised capitalism in as organised and coherent a political format as possible.
Interesting article. Yes the left / left unity needs to intervene in debate on Milibands proposal to reduce trade union affiliation and tu power in the Labour Party.
The trade union bureaucrats have allowed Blair, Brown and Milliband to almost take the labour party away, for their own. For the sake of looking tough on the trade unions; to please the bosses and their media, Milliband is willing to raise the spectre of further anti-working class reform of the Labour Party.
Breaking the Link is about stopping the working class base from having any chance of making the labour party or the trade union bureaucracy accountable.
This suits left unity members who reject any positive role or potential for the labour movement and are content to regroup community activists.
This equalition: of working class + community = the working class: is limiting and no solution to giving activists the truth.
We have to build the left in the labour movement + Communities (+a lot more)= working class.
The working class is the revolutionary class because it supplys the labour neccessary for production of goods, culture, community, of everything. The working class has potential power.
If we say, well we won’t relate to the largest political party of the working class, or the largest associations of workers in the workplace (the trade unions) then you are really getting into an elitist fantasy.
We should support activists in opposing these proposals and try to raise our anti-austerity agenda. We need to demand to make the Unions Fight against Brown and Camerons austerity. We demand the unions fight for this policy in the Labour Party, at the workplace and for strikes and ocupations to stop this austerity government.
Mark: agree that left nationalist trends in stateless “nations”are worth relating to (not tail ending). Some of the people in Claid Cumri, ssp, solidarity and maybe even Meybon Kernow need to be related to. Those that are socialists could be won to left unity. Currents within these movements might form an allience with left unity if it can prove its relevance.
Seeing that Comrades in the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) were blocking behind a “support the status quo” position I suggested the following. For those of us in Left Unity the issue is important because it raises the question of trade unionists being allowed to affiliate to the party of their choice and not being bound by the LP “monopoly” clause in many TU constitutions.
“This is a very conservative resolution from the CLPD that just defends the status quo. The LRC should develop its own position on the link and use this opportunity to put forward a radical and democratic alternative to the current system of affiliation.
The CLPD’s use of the term “collective affiliation” is actually a euphemism for the trade union leaders ability to pour millions of pounds into Labour leadership’s coffers irrespective of the LP policies or positions on defending working class interests. Thus the GMB Executive can overnight decide that 50,000 of its members will be affiliated to the LP rather than 450,000 – its rather like feudal landlords deciding to sell off their serfs!
It is an indefensible and corrupt system that has served the Labour leadership and trade union bureaucracy well over decades at the expense of rank and file trade unionists. We should work out a method of linkage that puts the ordinary members of the trade unions in charge of affiliation in return for a clear democratic say in party policy. There could be a number of ways of doing this:
Trade union organisations could collectively decide to affiliate at local and national level with members signing up to the LP, either paying a top up fee or the TU paying the standard membership fee
Local affiliation through TU branches, workplace LP groups, Trade Union Councils etc having delegates to local GCs and LP national conference
National conferences of affiliated members to decide policy and agree any party donations
No bloc votes at national or regional conferences where issues have been discussed before hand – represent minority positions
End the monopoly political affiliation rule of LP and most TU’s and allow affiliation to all political parties (barring fascist ones)
(This last point is important if we remember that the RMT was disaffiliated for supporting the SSP in Scotland and that most TUs blocked support for Ken Livingstone when he stood as an independent for the GLA on the grounds it was “unconstitutional”.)
Just some ideas I’m sure other comrades will have other ideas on how to place affiliation, policy making, and LP financing in the hands of the TU members rather than the bureaucrats.”
We should be more focused on left unity and not labour. Trade unions of today are more governed by powerful and determined leaders,, whom have become tricky as politicians. When and if we cooperate with organisation like this, we must not allow block votes. We need to show that we as a new party are not labour therefore one member one vote should never be compromised by said organisations using block votes to dictate policy. We are a democratic party of the left and however we move forward, should always maintain that simplistic view. Following these principles, people we are trying to attract can clearly understand how we agree and vote on policies that the majority of members have chosen. If unions, trade unions or any individual or organisation wishes to participate in left unity it has to be strict with these principle in mind and with the above in mind.