The Third Way
There’s an interesting discussion over at Liberal Conspiracy, mostly between Kate Belgrave and Dan Paskins (aka Don Paskini) about what’s going on in UNISON, and how leftwingers should react.
Kate wrote the initial post in the context of this evening’s meeting, hosted by John McDonnell, to hear representations from union activists Glenn Kelly and Caroline Bedale (see here also).
If I’m honest, which I am, I’m a bit hazy about the details, except that they involve alleged illegitimate actions by senior UNISON officials to silence leftwing voices within the union. In Kate’s terms:
Certain of Unison’s unelected officials appear at employment tribunal next week, accused of running a very nasty campaign to remove activists who insist that Unison cuts its links with Labour.
What comes out of the post and the ensuing discussion, though, is two firmly held views about what should now happened in UNISON.
Kate maintains, essentially, that a move towards disaffiliation from the Labour party is warranted, or at the very least that there should be an open discussion, without illegitimate actions undertaken by UNISON HQ to silence it, about disaffiliation.
For his part, Dan suggests that the call for disaffiliation is from a relatively small minority of leftwingers, and that the broad membership has no great interest in pursuing disaffiliation. He calls on the low turnout at the most recent union elections to support his contention. He also suggests that disaffiliation in itself will bring no benefits, and points to the relative lack of success of the disaffiliated RMT as evidence.
It’s a grown up discussion, which though heated remains respectful of each other’s position, but in the end they seem to agree to disagree; Kate maintains her position that the link with Labour is too far gone to make it worth saving, while Dan maintains that it remains the only worthwhile political link.
The question then remains on how to move forward. Fortunately both Dan and Kate seem in their comments to see at least some merit in the proposal I have mooted previously. This is that unions should consider not a total disaffiliation, but a re-affiliation at local level.
To quote from my previous stuff, which is aimed at an LRC audience rather than unions specifically:
What I would like to see happen is the Labour Representation Committee, and any other Labour left organization that’s listening announce loud and clear the following policy direction:
1. To campaign for the total disaffiliation of all affiliated trade unions currently affiliated to the national Labour party;
2. To campaign concurrently for a re-affiliation by these same trade unions TO CLPs (or branches) with a commitment to the same or more financial contribution;
3. To campaign for the re-affiliation to CLPs of trade unions which have already disaffiliated from the national Labour party;
4. Other Labour party should be invited to follow suit and to devolve their contributions to local Labour level.
Pretty simple really, as a rallying call, but it’s a campaign which would, if successful, have huge impacts upon the way the Labour party both operates, and just as importantly in view of its besmirched reputation, how it is regarded by people on the left outside the labour party, and especially by young people who have never thought it right to go anywhere near the Labour party….
The key impact, obviously, is that the flow of financial resources would be reversed. Unions and ordinary members would start to get a say both on how affairs are run locally, and how their MP (if there is one) represents them, because they hold the purse strings. More critically, the national leadership would lose its de facto power and would need to approach CLPs and, let’s say, regional conference, with a ‘business plan’ to be agreed if it is to get its fund to operate.
Of course, it’s never going to be simple to arrange this, and much will depend on the extent to which union members and their branches can exert the required influence over their own leaderships, either by winning votes against leadership advice or by toppling the leaderships.. I won’t cover that in detail here, as I’m not qualified to do so (not having been active in a union for a while) but much will depend upon who is correct about ‘where the unions are at’.
As I suggest in the last paragraph, this ‘third way’ , if it is to stand any change of happening, lies within the gift not of Labour party members, but of unions where there are leftwing elements challenging for control.
Is the environment now right for just such a step within UNISON. Dan disputes this, suggesting that the left is overestimating its own strength. Kate suggest the grassroots pressure for change within UNISON is real and vibrant. I don’t know who is right, as I’m not close enough to the UNISON action.
If though, there is a real appetite for challenge, then it may just be that a ‘third way’ platform – raising the possibility of real local change in favour of the grassroots, and a real return to a cohesive link between the Labour party and the union, with real lines of control and power reversed, might be something to sell to the membership.
If there are any UNISON lefties out there reading this, I’m happy to talk the ideas through. But you probably don’t need me.
I completely agree but worry that initial disaffiliation might be used by the party right to keep unions out. So, why not also campaign within the party for the link to be reformed in such a fashion?
I think the GMB do this already don’t they? Unions should be primarily sponsoring MPs that meet at least some of their demands. There can be no pretence that the industrial and political wing of any party will ever see completely eye to eye, but the relationship at the moment is completely balanced in favour of isolated centralism executed at the top of government.
Not sure what you mean by the GMB already doing this? GMB Branches are not allowed to use their funds for any political purposes at all, let alone channelling all Labour funding through them.
UNISON are doing that more too, Tom. CLPs that previously had Constituency Development Plans now have to bid for cash and show how it’ll be used to support UNISON’s campaign objectives.
But that, to me, is a bit of a cop-out. I’d prefer a strengthening of CDPs to simply picking particular MPs, with each side having to meet certain criteria (eg Labour would provide people to assist with strikes; use doorstep scripts supporting the union’s position on key issues; unions would provide guaranteed numbers of people for election day – not just full-timers – as well as cash, etc)
I think that Kate is right as regard where the Union active membership is at, in that the ‘soul’ of the union rests with the Left, the obstructionist measures of the bureaucracy in restricting basic union democracy never mind Left victories notwithstanding.
If we concede to Dan that Labour is the only worthwhile political link, then we need only concede it for as long as UNISON and the rest of the big unions remain affiliated. At any rate, I don’t concede the point; I think that if we measure what unions ‘achieve’ for all the millions they spend on Labour, their achievements don’t rank so highly above the unions currently casting around for other parties.
In fact, I’d argue that if we’re notching up Labour Left MPs as an achievement for the still-affiliated unions, we’d have to subtract all the New Labour MPs elected with the same money as own-goals. So really everything the sffiliated unions have achieved is more than balanced by the amount they shoot themselves in the foot by electing Labour MPs unworthy of the name.
With people like Denis MacShane or Frank Field on the payroll, unions may as well be funding Tories.
Yet I think we’re dreaming if we think that a move to localised affiliation fees (which I support) will fix this problem. Unions are not uniformly a bastion of the Left, and even while Kate may be correct – that the soul of the unions lies on the Left – she’s also right that only the hardcore will do stuff like vote. Plus, the traditional Labour Right was always a dab hand at shoring up its support using the unions.
Ultimately it all boils down to convincing Labour members and union members to support Left candidates, using our greater numbers to pack selection meetings etc. And let’s face it, if we could do that, we’d not be in the strait we’re in – because whilst party democracy is far from decent, it’s not so atrophied that goings-on like in Erith and Thamesmead or Calder Valley have become unremarkable. We could still pick better MPs than we have, and the LRC would be bigger than it is, if we were winning the battle to convince the average member.
This is one of the reasons I’m not optimistic about the results of a switch to OMOV for the NPF. In general, I’m against OMOV. Only activists – union and party – should get a vote. And they’ll do so by picking their delegates to conference. But on this specific issue, while it might increase Left representation as it has on the NEC, it’ll still leave the Left as a permanent minority of 36 (assuming a replication of the 4 out of 6 seats the Left wins for the constituency section of the NEC) in a body dominated by the Labour bureaucracy.
Hi Paul,
Nice post.
Few points: the problem I’m trying to describe is not whether or not affiliation is appropriate, but the extent of the disillusion with this particular Labour government among Unison members, and their sense that the union has a) not made anything like enough of its relationship with sponsored MPs, and b) is actively and viciously pursuing outspoken union members who are demanding that the facts of Unison’s relationship with Labour are debated out in the light. It’s not particularly about saving SWP or Socialist Party members from the plank – in many ways, their politics are external to this debate (except in the context of their (rightful) employment tribunal case against Unison, which is based on the argument that one’s overlords must be called to account if found to discriminate on the basis of philosophical belief (in this case, Marxism). My personal feeling is that a union sits on the left by definition, and thus must act as a broad church that tolerates a wide range of leftist beliefs. That’s not the key point of the debate right now, though.
Let’s talk about the points that are. It is my own view, and the view of many members I’ve spoken to for articles over the last few years – Barnet careworkers, Hackney council workers, Hammersmith and Fulham council workers, plenty of others – that the union bureaucracy has been less than helpful to these members in their battles against employers. It is the locally held view that Unison doesn’t want to embarrass the Brown government with strike action. It is also widely believed that top ranking Unison officials tend to want to position themselves for political careers, and that a reasonable relationship with the PLP is central to that. You’ll know yourself that plenty of Labour MPs come via the union route. And let’s face it – which aspiring Labour MP wants to be associated with 2010′s winter of discontent? Why would an unelected union official who’d been working a lifetime towards a political career want to be known as the person whose region brought a Labour government down?
This has always been a source of tension between union members and their organisers, especially where those organisers are unelected by the union base. The bureaucracy must needs try to control the inmates. And so it has tried. Last year, for example, Fremantle careworkers’ reps had to ballot their members some four times, if memory serves, as they continued their fight against terrible salary and conditions cuts – they said to me that they felt that Unison’s industrial action committee was delaying on purpose to douse the industrial unrest at that workplace (the union’s argument to the careworkers was that there were holes in ballot procedure that the employer could feasibly take issue with). I have also heard from persons associated with Hammersmith that they had to wait far too long for permission to ballot for strike action against much reduced terms and conditions imposed by the Tories,and by the time it came, it was too late – members had lost their will and the courage that it takes to stand up for strike action. As a result, organising and motivating at branch level has become more and more difficult. I have gone a few rounds with the monster myself, of course – as anyone who reads my stuff will know, I was kicked out of Unison myself about four years ago for posting anti-Blair comment on a UL website using a union computer. The investigation was a highly amusing farce that dragged on for months. I left before they could expel me, which they would have done in the end.
There is also the undeniable fact that the Unison hierarchy is placing regional officers – some might call them moles – in branches that it considers to be inclined to go off message. Accusations that a certain regional office is actively campaigning to bring these branches down form part of next week’s tribunal hearings. These are the so call Trot branches – the point to remember being that they’re not actually all Trot branches. They’re not all run by SWP or Socialist party members. A number of them are simply run by longstanding officers who are socialist-minded, in the sense that they have a natural aversion to privatisation and any policy trend that has a negative effect on terms and conditions and salaries of their members.
The fact that New Labour has allowed the privatisation juggernaut to steam through councils and over the top of public services, and done nothing to shore up TUPE, or to improve trade union legislation so that low paid workers could at least put up a reasonable fight against their tormentors, has done absolutely nothing to endear New Labour to union members, or the democratically elected branch secretaries and officers who represent those low paid workers at local level. You’ve got to remember – the people most badly affected by privatisation are careworkers, cleaners and so on – people who have absolutely no means of protecting themselves against impossible wage cuts and terms and conditions. When the likes of the Fremantle Trust or BUPA get their hands on care contracts, they immediately look to improve balance sheets by sweating the assets. That means cutting salaries and leave entitlements, etc. People in those jobs can ill afford further cuts, but end up having to tolerate them. Unsupported by their bureaucrats, local branch officers can do little to fight successfully for them.
So – there is a crisis of representation in the union movement at the moment, as indeed there is among all of us who earn less than £50,000 methinks. As I say, I think the heart of the union is to the left, but I don’t think the politics of the SP or SWP are particularly relevant to that heart or to the majority of union members. What has happened in this instance is that the SP’s attacks on Labour and calls for disaffiliation have struck a chord. Normally, when you go to Unison political fringe meetings, you see the usual suspects, plus a few extra wasters and hangers-on. What has been interesting about the Defend the Four/Reclaim the Union meetings is that you’ve tended to see new faces, and they’ve belonged to union members who are not specially active but who’ve come along to speak in support of their beleaguered branch secretary. I’ve even got interviews with people on my site with people from Greenwich (where Onay Kasab is based) who weren’t union members- they belonged to the local Greenwich race relations group and had worked with Kas on anti-BNP projects. They just wanted to come along (all the way down to Bournemouth to national conference, as it happened) to personally state that Kas was a good guy and that Unison was full of shit.
So it goes. I would always contend that when you see that an issue starting to catch on among people who are outside the usual nutso circles, you’re starting to see something interesting. That is what I’m contending, and that’s why I’m interested in this. Well – one of the reasons, anyway.
Tom @1: I think the right would be unlikely to go down the ‘rid of the union’ route for the pretty obvious reason that, if it did so, the LP would go bust. My main point is thatthe unions have a significant level of bargainiing power but have not, for reasons of institutional inertia mixed with a rightwing stance, not exercised it.
Yes, the sponsoring on MPs is there to be built on, but as Tim says below your comment, there’s a lot of building to do.
Rory @2: Thanks for that info. I wasn’t aware of that GMB restriction, but it is there to be changed.
Tim @3: Yes, I agree completely. A plan and a bit of lip service is one thing, but it is constituency focused. What I’m talking about is combining both real union/CLP activist engagement with real empowerment of union-enhanced CLPs in the national political process.
Dave @4: Yes, my sense is that Kate is right too about where the borader union membership stands, although it may not have been articulated particualarly (though that of course is part of the current design). The honest truth is I don’t know much beyond my own patch, where union members are at once embittered and somewhat disheartened, but I think Kate’s examples of meeting attendance (see her comment below) are convincing, and a more convincing take than Dan’s.
I’m not suggesting for one second that a local affiliation scheme will work like a silver bullet, and ensure that leftwing policies flow through CLPs onto MPs with rights of recall, and more importantly than via indiv MPs into national policy making process. Of course it will be bitty and piecemeal, but what I do suggest it will bring is a sense of direction, and practical struggle for change within CLPs and unions, that is currently lacking. A short/medium term achievable goal of bringing physical bodies together in the same room and arguing for the same thing has got to be, however messy, a step forward.
I repeat, though, that while MP selections are important, they are not the only part of the process we should be interested in changing (see Tim’s comments above your). By and large, I’d argue that the MP selection stuff can come later (and realistically we’re talking about 2-3 years time for most consituencies, half way into a new parliament when selections/re-selections are done.
I agree fully about the dangers of OMOV, however attractive sounding it may be in terms of its simplicity and members feeling that they may be ‘engaged’. There’s a fuller post in there at some point, so i’ll leave it for now if that’s ok.
Kate @5: Hope the meeting went well tonight. Will be interested to hear reports as they come out from you, Jon, Marsha-Jane etc..
I acknowledge that your OP at LibCon was not really about affiliation/ disaffilation, but about the internal process of UNISON. I simply used it unashamedly as a tag to get back to my own hobby horse of local affiliation as the ‘third way’. However, I would say that the conditions within the union, and the general feeling of members, does offer both a real opportunity to tap into general discontent with New Labour by branches taking matters into their own hands with their own money, but via a process of fightback against the UNISON HQ powers, with a clear short term goal of arguing/voting for a change in the way money is paid to Labour.
How to take forward such an idea – and i recognise that if it meets a mixed reception here it is likely to elsewhere – is the first challenge. I first set out the ideas with the LRC in mind, but frankly no-one’s seemed interested, perhaps because of the length at which I’ve set it out, but more likely simply because I am a nobody in the union movement. What is needed, if it is to anywhere, in whatever modified form, is for better known leftwinger in UNISON to ostart to champion it as the short term, achievable goal around which compaign (and union rep manifesto)resources might be gathered. Ideas welcome.
Paul – In fairness, to get people interested you’ll have to do more than blog on the subject. A motion to LRC conference would have been a start.
In the meantime I’ve sent a few people links to your original post. Some unimpressed, others more interested.
Do you have a local LRC group in your area who can take it up?
Rory
You couldn’t be more right.
This blogging business, on a site I’ve attached myself to because of the nature of its existing readership, is a way to throw ideas about and get informed and intelligent comment, but that doesn’t replace the need for proper action with real people in real settings.
But it’s a good start if you;ve been good enough to pass on the idea to non-blog watching activists, for which many thanks. I’d be interested, if you have time, for a feel for why people are unimpressed. Is it because (a bit like Dave) they feel simply that the Labour party is too far gone to be worth engaging with – an understandable response – or because they thing it won’t work for other reasons? As I’ve said, the whole thing would be messy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be effective.
On the LRc motion point, again I agree that it would have been good to take it there via an affiliated organisation. The simple truth is that this kind of strategy didn’t occur to me till I was wokring though my 6 part series on the future of the Labour left (and it occurred to me BECAUSE I worked through the series), and that didn’t happen til Sept/Oct. While Dave and I talked briefly about trying to get some kind of motion in via an affiliate, it just wasn’t realistic in the timescale for submissions (and I think Dave and I disagree on whether it’s a good idea anyway).
Rather, I prefer to think of what I am suggesting as something whic might, when there;s been time to work it all through and engage properly with activists, which might go to the NEXT LRC as a motion to support ongoing/developig activity with LRC resources.
On the matter of whether I have a local LRC, the answe is no. While this certainly lies on my guilt pile, the reality in my own CLP is that it remains dominated by the right/’apopotical’ groupings with little union linkage, and that while I’m working to engender union links it’s going to slow.
This situation of course is not atypical of CLPs in non-metropolitan areas (I’m in West Lancs between Liverpool and MCr) and the 1980s tell us that the take overs of CLPs by the left happened in the major mets (London, Sheff, Mcr) rather than the outer lying areas. This, I suggest, is simply to do with the demographics, of a decent, critical mass number younger, energetic lefties living in biogger towns/cities, though of course to bow to these demographics is self-defeating.
I’m in touch with Susan Press about doing stuff round our way, and i am encouraged by the way she’s been able to forge West Yorks LRC from ‘the sticks’, but I still see my own practical role as being to support LRC/union groups (and other lefiter CLPs) in a process of re-unionisation, rather than making West Lancs an example (though perhaps doing it all in a ‘non-receptive’, second stage area is an example in itself).
Hi Paul,
I mentioned your idea to some people last night and they’re were quite interested. I’m going to write up my report and will be in touch, because it may well be time to start to try and get ideas like yours into the discussion among union members. Something’s got to start moving.
Ta Kate
If it gets that far I’m happy to bob down to London to talk through ideas and put together a plan of first-stage campaign action plan with people, perhaps bringing with it an informed non-metropolitan view on how such an approach might play out in/with CLP activists, as there’ll need to be some kind of local iterative process of engagement to get to the point you could even take it ‘materially’ towards national union election level. Would be great but hot essential if we could involve John McDonnell to legitimise such stuff.
I’m always so much happier project planning………
Briefly, in terms of the people who have expressed a lack of interest in the idea, they are coming from the point of view not just that Labour is “too far gone” but that Labourism itself is a dead end. From that point of view, changing the relationship between Labour and the unions would be irrelevant as long as the basic ideas remain the same.
I did get some more interested comments though, including from one member of the TUC General Council. Not a firm commitment to support but interest in maybe discussing further.
Much of the polemic at present seems to be around whether the future Ideal Socialist Party will turn out to be the Labour Party or some new party (paraphrasing slightly…). My own view remains that, as long as the same problems exist within the unions which have been the undoing of the C20th Labour Party, including the structure of the union link, it matters little whether you replicate the same mistakes over again within the existing Labour Party or outside it. In that respect this idea would be a step forward.
“My own view remains that, as long as the same problems exist within the unions which have been the undoing of the C20th Labour Party, including the structure of the union link, it matters little whether you replicate the same mistakes over again within the existing Labour Party or outside it. In that respect this idea would be a step forward.”
Completely agree with this – if the major unions as they currently exist, and with current membership levels, formed a new party I’m pretty sure it would end up very similar to the Labour Party – with the possible exception of under STV where a union party was content to be a coalition partner (but then the coalition as a whole would probably be similar or worse to the current Labour Party).