Making the unions fight

Submitted by Anon on 7 October, 2005 - 6:45

At this year’s Labour Party Conference at Brighton the main affiliated trade unions came out pretty solidly in opposition to Blair and Brown, defeating the government on a range of important questions. They put Labour Party conference on record demanding the restoration of the core trade union right to take solidarity action.

Yet the limits and contradictions of even the best trade union leaderships was shown in the fact that those who demanded at Labour Conference that trade unionists should have the legal right to take solidarity action were at the same time doing a deal over the heads of the Gate Gourmet workers which allowed the cowboy employer to pick out 144 workers and throw them out of work, some of them because they were trade union activists.

The big question now is will the union leaders fight for Labour Party Conference policy — their policy? Blair and Brown have already bluntly told the unions that they will take no notice of Conference decisions. They are, they say, intent they say on keeping Britain “competitive”.

That means? That they want the best conditions in which the bosses can go on exploiting British workers, and therefore they will fight to maintain the Tory laws — the most restrictive labour legislation in western Europe as Blair himself boasts — which outlaw solidarity action, the core weapon of effective trade unionism. And they have responded to the events at Brighton by threats to “reform” Labour’s structures so as to cut down the power of the trade unions.

What are the unions going to do now? Shrug and say “well we tried” in response to Blair-Brown declarations that they will ignore Labour Party conference? Confine themselves to a form of empty words, empty resolutions and empty threats on their side, while doing nothing to effectively oppose the Labour leadership? Or are they going to fight against the Blair Tory-government for the decisions they pushed through Labour Party Conference?

Signs are that if the rank and file militants don’t organise for this fight, the trade union leaders will shirk confrontation with the Blairites. The shocking fact is the union leaders have said not a single word in response to Blair’s and Brown’s declaration that thay will ignore Conference decisions. Not a word!

The truth is that without the active support of the trade union leaders of a decade go, the Blairites could never have hi-jacked the Labour Party and turned it into the neo-Tory party that has ruled Britain for the last eight years. They couldn’t have done it; and if, improbably, they had managed it against the will of the trade unions, they could not have mantained their grip against the active opposition of the trade unions.

The out and out traitor trade union leadership responsible for that is gone. The new leaders are, unlike most of their immediate predecessors, genuine trade unionists, concerned to better conditions for their members. They know what “New Labour” is. They have dared commit Labour Party conference to anti-New Labour policies. But they now come up against the fact that “resolutionary activity” at Labour Party conference is not enough. If it “provokes” a Blairite onslaught to cut down the remaining power of the unions in the Labour Party, then, unless the union leaders decide to fight Blair, Brown and the other Tories, “Christian Democrats”, and cross-over Stalinists who run “New Labour”, its outcome may well be to strengthen the Blairite grip in the Labour Party.

Begging concessions from the Labour leadership will never unshackle the trade unions. Unions have always established their rights by deploying their organised strength. Union strength and determination came first, pro-union legislation afterwards.

Britain’s extreme anti-union laws are now such an anomaly in the context of the EU that, if they did it boldly and aggressively, the unions could probably “get away with” defying the law on solidarity action, as indeed the British Airways workers in support of the Gate Gourmet dispute did (at least until the TGWU retreated.) Here actions will speak more forcefully than words and resolutions. If the “Labour” Government were to get heavy with the unions, using the Tory-imposed anti-union laws, the possibility would arise of a successful appeal for massive trade union action throughout the EU and in support of British unions fighting for elementary trade union rights.

It is not just trade union rights. No one can have any doubt that the Government is determined to destroy what remains of the NHS. Relentlessly, systematically, they work to replace the NHS with private medical care.

They prattle about giving people “choice” while working to create a system that will deprive large groups of working class people of anything like effective medical care! There is tremendous opposition to what they are doing, but it lacks a focus.

Since the Blairites hi-jacked the Labour Party, this opposition to the destruction of the NHS has no political outlet. The union should organise this opposition, place themselves at the centre of a mass movement to stop them destroying the NHS. Not just to protest and denounce, but to stop. Demonstrations, petitions, action by hospital workers, all these could now very quickly be roused into an unstoppable movement if the union leaders were to act.

The decisions of Brighton can be an important breakthrough in the fight to either reclaim or create a replacement for the Labour Party which the Blairites hijacked over a decade ago

There is still a very long way to go, and it is by no means certain that the recreation of a political labour movement will take the form of a gradual self-renewal of the Labour Party. In sharp contrast to trade union opposition at Brighton, 60% of the CLP delegates backed the Government.

As a by-product of a serious union-led campaign for the decisions of Brighton, large numbers could be drawn over time into the Labour Party, there to join the fight to break the death-grip of the Blairites. If the Labour Party can be taken out of the hands of the Blairites at all — and we are far from sure that it can — that is the only way it can be done.

Militant trade unionists should demand that the unions face up to their responsibilities here too. Putting it very simply, we should demand that the union leaders fight this Blair-Tory Government.

The first demand that rank and file members should make on the union leaders is that they defy the anti-union laws.

We should demand that thet mobilise the labour movement to stop — before it is too late — the Blairites finishing what Thatcher started, the destruction of the NHS.

We should demand that the unions fight the Government on pensions.

If that can now, after Brighton, be done through some of the structures of the Labour Party, good. But in any case, it must be done.

That is the only way to get the New Labour government to back down and put an end to the legal shackles on the trade unions, and the criminal destruction of the NHS.

The decisive thing in the period ahead is to campaign to make the trade union leaders fight — while simultaneously organising the rank and file to fight, with, without, or against them.

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