Daniel Randall was a delegate to the recent AGM of the RMT rail union. He reports here in a personal capacity.
The annual general meeting of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers (RMT) took place in Leeds from 24-29 October. The AGM had held-over business from the truncated 2020 AGM, which took place online, as well the 2021 business. It took place against the backdrop of threats including big job cuts in Network Rail, a pay freeze across the rail industry, and cuts on Transport for London.
Recent officer elections in the union have seen the Broad Left alliance between Stalinists, primarily supporters of the Communist Party of Britain and Morning Star, and “Old Labour” types, consolidate its power. Broad Left-backed Mick Lynch became the general secretary in May, and on 25 October Eddie Dempsey was announced as narrowly beating Alan Pottage for assistant general secretary, by around 600 votes on a turnout of 14%. Politically, Dempsey is a Stalinist, as well as an outspoken critic of “woke liberal identity politics”.
The AGM, however, did not suggest a drift to the right. It endorsed a broad swathe of radical policy — some backed by the top table, but some passed against top table recommendations.
The conference reaffirmed the RMT’s commitment to opposing all anti-union laws, and its support for the Free Our Unions campaign. The motions passed, which were submitted by branches including my own, also included a commitment to adopt a policy of non-compliance should new laws requiring minimum service levels during transport workers’ strikes be passed.
Green New Deal
On climate change, a radical motion proposing a “Socialist Green New Deal” had been rejected in 2019, on the basis that its call for an end to fossil fuel extraction would lead to RMT members working in the offshore energy sector losing their jobs, despite the motion explicitly committing the union to a worker-led just transition approach. This year, a similar motion was overwhelmingly carried, and a motion calling on the union to support an expansion of jobs in methane gas extraction was rejected.
On officers’ pay, whereas the 2019 conference had overwhelmingly rejected a motion supporting the principle of “workers’ representatives on workers’ wages”, the 2021 AGM overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal to reduce the general secretary and assistant general secretary salaries by 20% and 10% respectively. To his credit, this proposal originated with Mick Lynch himself. The proposal acknowledged the pressure that had built up in the union around the issue, with a number of candidates in elections committing not to take the full salary if elected. While individual officers in other unions have enacted similar pledges, the RMT’s decision makes it the first TUC-affiliated union to move at AGM level on the problem of excessively high pay for union officers. Workers’ Liberty supporters have been central to this argument within RMT over a number of years.
China
In a debate on China, Alex Gordon, secretary of RMT’s Paddington No. 1 branch and a member of the Communist Party of Britain’s Political Committee, moved a motion proposing the union support the “No Cold War” campaign, and organise a delegation to China to meet union representatives. I opposed the motion, arguing that rallies for the “No Cold War” campaign had seen speakers whitewash (or “red-wash”) the Chinese state, and that any delegation to China that met with “official” trade unions would be a similar exercise in whitewashing, given that independent unions are illegal and the “official” union federation is an arm of the state.
Despite Gordon describing my assessment of the “No Cold War” campaign as a “dirty smear”, the conference voted down the motion. It then overwhelmingly carried a motion from my own branch opposing China’s repression of the Uyghur people and resolving to support the work of the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign, whilst also condemning anti-Chinese bigotry and militarist posturing towards China.
The AGM also endorsed a motion marking the centenary of the Poplar Rates Rebellion, and agreed to support the “Poplar100” committee in its memorial activities.
The AGM passed numerous appeals against NEC decisions, particularly on their failures to properly act on and carry out motions from the union’s Disabled Members’ Advisory Committee. This committee has only existed for four years, after the 2015 AGM overturned years of opposition from the union’s leadership. Since then, it has developed and organised in a very positive way, but faced repeated obstruction from the previous general secretary and NEC. Winning these appeals will mean that the committee will be able to step up campaigning against discrimination and for accessible, mentally-healthy workplaces. It also gives a strong message to the national leadership to work with the union’s equalities committees, not against them. Many delegates spoke in debates about the need to tackle inequality and improve diversity within the union’s leadership, but unfortunately, the agenda lacked the proposals needed to do this.
Proposals for structural change supported by the general secretary and the Broad Left were rejected overwhelmingly. On the surface the proposals seemed positive, purporting to reorganise the union along more industrial lines and create reserved seats for equalities groups, both aims Workers’ Liberty members in RMT have backed for some time. But they propose only to create two reserved seats, for women and BEM members, excluding the LGBT+ and disabled members’ equality structures. They were also made without any prior consultation with the elected equalities committees. They rule out in advance any expansion in the size of the full-time, lay NEC, so any additional NEC seats would be part-time only.
Status quo
Yet the status quo - with unrepresentative regional constituencies and an overwhelmingly white, male leadership - is indefensible. Workers’ Liberty members active in RMT will seek to work with other activists to develop alternative proposals for reform.
As the highest governing body of the union, the AGM assumes the full powers of the NEC for the week it sits, and therefore makes all decisions about industrial action and disputes. So it was the AGM that voted to reject an unsatisfactory settlement in RMT members’ dispute with ScotRail, where workers have undertaken weeks of strikes.
The offer was based on a two-year deal with a £300 bonus for working during COP26, improved rest day arrangements, but with a tranche of productivity strings in the second year. The lead officer supported putting the offer to a referendum, and the general secretary emphasised the lead officer’s assessment, but the AGM followed the lead of rank-and-file ScotRail reps at the AGM who said unanimously that it was so clearly unacceptable that it should be rejected outright.
The following day, a new offer was tabled, including a 2.5% pay increase and removing the second year and productivity strings, which the ScotRail reps then urged delegates to accept. Although it is perhaps unfortunate that the union gave up the leverage that strikes planned during COP (1-12 November) would have given workers, it was right that the AGM took its lead from the ScotRail reps themselves.
Unfortunately, the conference ended early on its last day when head office staff, present to provide administrative support to the conference, held a walkout. This was in response to the AGM upholding an appeal against an NEC decision regarding a protest at the union’s head office, following the RMT’s Union Learning Rep coordinator being made compulsorily redundant. The protest presented itself as a picket line, and some staff felt that by overturning the NEC’s decision to condemn aspects of the protest, the AGM was collectively denouncing staff who worked despite the protest as “scabs”.
Although I voted for the appeal, I did so because the NEC decision included the reopening of a disciplinary process against the dismissed ULR coordinator, who had subsequently been reinstated. It was certainly not my intention, nor the intention of any other delegate I spoke to, to condemn other union staff.
Subsequently, accounts of the events appeared in the press, including the BBC,Morning Star, and Union News UK, which presented a misleading and inaccurate account of events, and included references to an “extremist faction” within the union. At the time of writing, the strike has ended, but the dispute with union staff is still ongoing, although it is unclear what its demands are. Arrangements need to be made swiftly to ensure the AGM can reconvene to conclude its business.
We need an independent rank-and-file left, constituted not merely as an electoral network but as a body that seeks the radical transformation of the union — both to push back any rightwards drift, and to accelerate the more radical trends suggested by the policy outcomes of the AGM.
