By Jack Haslam
Last December, during the row about the Hayden Philips Report on state funding of political parties, Solidarity warned that Gordon Brown was telling trade union leaders that he wanted an end to the situation where trade union votes defeated the leadership at Labour Party conference.
Brown now wants to turn that wish into a reality.
On Sunday afternoon, 24 June, just before he was crowned leader, Brown put what was presented as a non-controversial document on “improving” the policy forum process to the Labour Party National Executive Committee. Inquisitive NEC members were reassured by Brown aides that the proposals had been cleared with the leadership of the major trade unions via the Trade Union Liaison Organisation. Whether or not that is the case is a moot point, but it has not taken long for the full and radical significance of Brown’s plans to become apparent. By all accounts the NEC did not study the document properly.
In Brown’s speech to the Labour conference in Manchester that afternoon there was just one main reference to the document. In it Brown said that he wanted Labour’s programme to be decided by an “One Member One Vote” ballot.
By Monday morning the spin doctors had been at work and what was being presented to the media was somewhat different from what the NEC had been told less than 24 hours earlier.
The Today programme on Radio 4 said they had learnt that Brown planned proposals that would: “stop unions shaping policy at Labour's annual conference”.
The details of the proposal are this.
Brown wants to remove the right of both Constituency Labour Parties and trade unions to put contemporary motions to Labour conference. He wants to allow only “deliberative debates” with no votes being taken. The aim of this is to stop trade unions or CLPs putting up motions which oppose government policy or call for major changes on issues like the trade union laws or privatisation.
Brown is in a rush to get these proposals through. A timetable has been put forward which would mean the changes get put to this year’s conference.
Brown has said that he wants to convince the trade unions about these proposals — which means that he wants to convince the trade union leaders. How on earth can he do that?
The Brown camp say some trade union leaders could be persuaded that the changes would make it politically easier for Brown to make behind the scenes concessions to them. Without media attention on votes at Labour conference Brown wouldn’t have to make a point of facing down trade union “demands”.
Not very convincing. But are the union leaders so demoralised, lacking in political self belief and plain desperate that they will do anything for Brown in the hope of getting a few crumbs in return? Maybe. Whether they can take their unions with them – and in particular the union delegations to the Labour Party conference — is another matter.
Unison is a cause for worry. The existing paper policy of the Unison Labour Link rules out any possibility of the union supporting Brown. However, the top levels of the Unison political structure are “rotten to the core, and completely New Labour” as one Unison insider put it. This makes the elections that are taking place now in the Unison Labour Link organisation more important than ever.
The key to Unite — and almost certainly to what the rest of the other major unions do is what will happen in the TGWU section. The union is due to hold its Biennial Delegate Conference and a clear lead from the union in opposition to Brown’s plans would help galvanise trade union opposition.
The Communication Workers’ Union could also provide a vital impetus to the struggle against Brown’s plans. This year’s Labour Party conference could become a vitally important platform for demonstrating labour movement support for the postal workers in their struggle against Royal Mail. Taking support for the strike into the Labour Party will make it more difficult for Brown to get his way on constitutional changes.
This is an attack on the rights of the constituencies as well as the trade unions. The unions are the target of Brown’s campaign in the press, but the CLPs too would be denied the right to put motions to conference.
We need to build a broad campaign of labour movement opposition to these proposals in both the unions and the CLPs. John McDonnell MP has — rightly — talked of the need to launch such a campaign immediately.
In such a campaign we should not defend the status quo. We also need to raise the right of conference to win back control over policy, by pressing for the right of CLPs and affiliates to submit motions to amend Policy forum documents and other proposals from the NEC, and for contemporary motions to be taken as amending Policy Forum documents. If we campaign about what is wrong with the policy forum process and the sham of OMOV, “take it or leave it” ballots, and to reverse the criminal damage that New Labour has done to the political labour movement, we will be in a better place to make sure Brown does not get any of his proposals through.
If the unions and CLPs fight to regain their rights, and to reassert the rights of conference, then Brown will press on in undermining conference and increasing the use of OMOV plebiscites anyway, even if his full plan for removing conference motions altogether does not go through. Such plebiscites are already allowed under the existing rules.
