Workers' Liberty

Resist Blairite drive to reduce union voice in the Labour Party

29 Nov 2006

Union-Labour link crisis: Gordon Brown is part of the same problem as Blair and Hayden Philips. By Jack Haslam The widely reported proposals in the draft version of the Hayden Philips report on party funding have provoked what appears to be a very serious crisis within the Labour Party. If implemented, the proposals, which would bring in a donation limit of £50,000 per year and require all political levy payers to renew their levy every year, would effectively undermine the trade union/Labour Party link, by making it an organisational nightmare and financial burden to operate. It is important...

Building fighting unions - or not

20 Nov 2006

By Jim Denham and Dan Nichols Socialist Worker claimed that the Respect-organised Organising for Fighting Unions conference on 11 November would be “the biggest unofficial gathering of rank and file trade unionists since the mid-1980s”. In fact, there were about 600 or 700 people in attendance: nothing to be sneezed at, but noticeably smaller than the Socialist Alliance-initiated conference on union political funds in 2001. Even according to the Respect website, only a small minority of “delegates” were actually delegated by their union branch or any kind of labour movement body. There were an...

Organising for fighting unions

11 Nov 2006

Below is the text of the leaflet distributed by AWL members at the Respect Coalition-initiated "Organising for Fighting Unions" conference in London on Saturday 11 November. ----- "WORKERS' CHARTER" IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH! We need a movement of the membership across the trade unions: • To resist, in alliance with service-users, and roll back the Government's agenda of privatisation, and win adequate funding of public services. Best quality health care and education, free for all, as a right, and 100% public ownership in public services, this time with democratic control. The right to retire at 60...

Unions vote down Blairites

06 Oct 2006

By a Labour Party Conference delegate DESPITE the bureaucratic exclusion, for the first time ever, of a majority of resolutions from Constituency Labour Parties, this year’s Labour Party conference has surpassed last year’s record by inflicting five significant defeats on the government. On Thursday, the party’s Conference Arrangements Committee announced it was ruling out dozens of resolutions on issues including Iraq, council housing, the replacement of Trident, the anti-trade union laws, school admissions, Thames Water and Venezuela on the grounds that they were not “contemporary”. Despite...

Technology and workers’ control

10 Sep 2006

Fifty years ago this year, in 1956, perhaps the greatest technological revolution of the 20th century started. It was much more prosaic, “low-tech”, and distant from advanced scientific discoveries than the innovations with computers and microelectronics, but has arguably had a greater social and economic impact. It was “containerisation” — putting seagoing cargo into big, standard-sized metal boxes. Over the decades it has reduced global sea transport costs hugely, driving the economic processes of “globalisation” more than any other technological factor. The USA did not start to develop its...

Stop Blair and Brown: An appeal to the unions

29 Aug 2006

Dear Brothers and Sisters, There are times when politics is in flux, when resolute action, or, alternatively, gutless inaction, shapes the future. Now is such a time. Tony Blair’s “retirement agenda”, what he wants to do in his last period as prime minister, is thoroughly reactionary. He wants to complete the destruction of the National Health Service which Thatcher began 25 years ago. “Market forces” within the Health Service are working increasingly to disintegrate it. You know that as well as we do. Everyone who pays attention to politics knows it, too. NHS patients are being made painfully...

Draft text for motions in trade union branches on Lebanon

20 Aug 2006

Draft text for motions in trade union branches on Lebanon. Please adapt as seems best. We condemn the recent Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon, and call for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanon. We believe: That the only workable political basis in the Middle East for peace, and for the cross-border workers' unity necessary for the fundamental solution to the region's sufferings, a socialist federation of the Middle East, is the right of every nation to self-determination - including both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. That means the right of the Palestinians to...

Discussing working-class representation

16 Jul 2006

About 20 people attended South West London AWL's first-ever forum in Croydon on 18 June about “Who represents the working class in politics?”. Those present came from a variety of different political backgrounds, including the former Socialist Alliance and the Labour left; pretty much all of them were trade unionists, with contingents from local branches of Unison and the PCS. After a lead off from Charlie McDonald — an AWL member and PCS activist who stood in Hackney as a Socialist Unity candidate in the May local elections — there was a lengthy discussion from the floor. Much of this focused...

RMT: A Step Forward for Political Representation?

14 Jul 2006 | Blog post

Yesterday, I got my union branch to agree what I think is a positive step forward in the fight for working-class political representation.

Since my union, RMT, parted company with the Labour Party more than two years ago, it has still not quite found its feet in pursuing political representation...

Model motions for trade union meetings, June-July 2006

13 Jun 2006

Please adapt as suitable for your union branch, submit these motions, and let us know the results. Responding to the BNP's May successes Pensions White Paper Labour Party leadership .

Unions & politics