Brown's plan is a death blow

Submitted by Anon on 14 September, 2007 - 6:00

It’s all very quiet. You won’t have read a lot about it in the press, heard much about it on TV, or even been told much about it by your union, if you’re a union member. But at the Labour Party conference starting on 23 September, Gordon Brown plans to end 107 years of working-class political input through the Labour Party. Not just to add “a further attack on Labour Party democracy” to the many made since Neil Kinnock’s time. Not just to introduce “more of the same”. Not just to add a further ailment to the already very sick state of working-class political representation in the Labour Party. This is a death blow.

We need an upfront, organised, rank and file campaign against it.

Brown’s plan, bounced through the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee on 24 June, just after he was officially declared Tony Blair’s successor as Labour Party leader, would ban unions and local Labour Parties from putting motions on current political issues to Labour Party conference.

All votes on policy would take place in the almost-impermeable, behind-closed-doors National Policy Forum, and then be “ratified” by take-it-or-leave referendums of the Labour Party membership.

Unions would, fundamentally, lose all political say in the Labour Party other than the sort of “say” the US unions can get in the US Democratic Party, through horse-trading between union leaders and politicians on the lines of “give us a concession on this issue and we’ll give you a few more millions for your campaign”.

An official Labour Party consultation on Brown’s plan ends on Friday 14 September. On Tuesday 18 September, Labour’s Executive will meet and decide the final proposals, which will then be sprung on the delegates at Labour’s conference starting 23 September.

The word from insiders is that all the major unions oppose Brown’s plan. If the union leaders stand firm on that, then the plan cannot go through. Even the dimmest or most timid union leader can see that the plan is directly aimed against their union having even the most plaintive voice in politics. And, despite everything, the unions still have nearly 50% of the vote at Labour’s conference. Brown cannot change the rules without a conference vote.
Yet no union leader has campaigned against the plan publicly and loudly. None has gone out to inform and mobilise his or her union members against Brown’s plan. All retain the freedom, with virtually no control from the rank and file, to swing behind Brown at the last minute, with the excuse that the plan has been modified in some detail or sugared by links to some concession.

No union, and none of the various Labour-left movements, has taken the initiative for an organised campaign on the issue, reaching out to the union branches and local Labour Parties.

Even at this late stage, and even if it has to be done from a small starting base, such an initiative is vital. This Labour Party conference will not be, and must not be, the end of the story.

If Brown dilutes his plan heavily, we will need a campaign to prevent him coming back with the rest of it (and to reverse that diluted plan: even a dilution could do great damage). If he pushes it through conference undiluted, then we must start a campaign to reverse the decision.

Brown must not be allowed to get away with it without a fight. We cannot tolerate the complacent response which would say: “Ah well, that just proves the Labour Party is finished. We thought it was pretty much gone anyway”. If union organisations do not fight to defend their existing political rights - or, more to the point, if socialists do not mobilise those union organisations to fight to defend those rights — then they will not, any time soon, magically leap out of that defeatism to make themselves the bearers of a new workers’ party.

The fight for a new workers’ party passes through the fight to defend, and use, the unions’ existing political voice, not through the passive abandonment of it.

In the last few years it has become a regular thing for the unions to vote resolutions through Labour Party conference opposing Blair and Brown on key issues — the right to trade-union solidarity action, the rebuilding rather than destruction of council housing, the defence rather than the privatisation of the Health Service. Equally regularly, the Labour Party leadership ignores the resolutions, and the union leaders make no complaint.

Brown, however, can see that this situation creates a permanent tension — a risk for him, a hope for us. Some day the unions’ rank and file will gain the confidence to demand that democratic votes are respected, and put pressure on their leaders. To banish that risk, Brown wants to banish the democratic votes.

• Detailed briefing on Brown’s plan: www.workersliberty.org/node/8934

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