Though Cowards Flinch

No doubt the Conservative-LibDem coalition is breathing a small sigh of relief that UNISON, one of the biggest public sector unions, yesterday re-elected Dave Prentis by 67% compared to 33% for two Left challengers. The fact that there were two left candidates at all is itself ridiculous but it’s not the worst part of the matter.

In re-electing Dave Prentis, after the customary bureaucratic shenanigans that is part and parcel of UNISON internal politics, the union has given the Con-Dem coalition what they want; someone quite willing to further ossify the union as an adjunct to faux Tory populism rather than as an organisation that will defend jobs, pensions and working conditions.

By faux populism, I of course mean the recent headlines that Cameron and co have been calling on public sector employees to submit their ideas on how to save money. Prentis is lockstep with the Tories on this one, having already admitted that “union negotiators are being trained in public procurement negotiations and local government and health finances. The idea is to go through an employer’s books and suggest alternative ways to make savings.”

Why isn’t this a good idea? After all, to paraphrase David Cameron, if anyone knows where money can be saved, it’ll be the workers themselves – but the reality is that with a nominal figure of 25% involved, thousands of jobs are on the line and the only way to fix a problem external to the public services will be to squeeze more work for decreased remuneration out of a smaller number of staff. There’s no way to get around that, wherever the cuts fall.

Populist gestures such as public consultation are part of a savvy Tory war for the middle ground; if people not directly involved with these jobs (the majority of which are low paying) can be convinced that the cuts are necessary, it’ll undermine attempts at a fightback. Meanwhile Dave Prentis and his ilk can bleat that they had alternatives – but alternatives won’t save jobs and won’t save wages in this context. Standing up and fighting is all that will.

Don’t look to Prentis though, as apparently, “it is unlikely that we would take national industrial action over jobs.”

We can only hope that Tory efforts will be shattered by the pay freeze they have announced for all public sector workers earning over 21,000 GBP per year. This includes a big chunk of teachers and other groups regarded as ‘professional’ (despite the fact that their low wages deny them the opportunity to get on the property ladder in many British cities – where the work is).

With union density at a low point, and few enough signs of resistance emerging from the private sector, the labour movement faces a two-front war. The first, directly to fight against the government cuts and intentions to raise the pensionable age to 66, the second to begin a serious campaign of recruitment. ‘Procurement negotiators’ will be unnecessary if the unions can capitalise on the continuing antipathy that exists to the Tories and recruit amongst public and private sector – and the casualisation of the latter is crying out for unions to step up.

Thankfully this goes beyond one union, however big and however entrenched its ‘moderates’ are.

Prentis’ election throws a bunch of spanners into the works for the Labour Left (hard and soft alike). Despite rumblings about UNISON’s funding to Labour – the second largest single funder of the party, I believe – this was Prentis’ feint leftwards, to deprive Roger Bannister and Paul Holmes of their greatest campaign issue – the contradiction between continuing support for Labour and a Labour government that kept hounding the public sector.

Whereas a Holmes victory might have thrown UNISON weight behind a reform through Labour conference, and a Bannister victory would almost certainly have delivered the impetus necessary to disaffiliate from Labour and orient towards other disaffiliated unions and put a new working class party on the agenda, Prentis will back neither. Which could very well mean that, barring some shocking turn in Unite’s elections, Labour’s leadership might remain largely intact and Labour’s opposition to the Tories might remain spoken only.

This would surely seal the doom of Labour, if it won’t even speak up for the people whose needs should be the lifeblood of the party when in opposition. Worrying times ahead, I fear.

Both Ed and David Miliband have begun their rhetorical repositioning for the leadership campaign. The by-line of the Guardian article on Brother David reads, “Former foreign secretary woos the party’s left…” but the reality is probably more accurately exposed by Paul Waugh’s summary over at the Evening Standard. David Miliband has set himself up as the ‘clean hands’ candidate – nodding to the past, nodding to the thousands of activists who had to watch dumbfounded as Labour waddled from mistake to disaster and so on.

Meanwhile, brother Ed has turned to rather naive-sounding guff about New Labour not having a sense of mission, but falling into the mindset of ‘technocratic caretakers’. His pitch is that Labour needs to hook up once more with the core vote, but that New Labour ‘asked the hard questions’ – that something can be saved. Some people seem to think that Brother Ed is appealing to the working class, and he picks out ‘real world’ examples, saying that we should prefer the realities visited upon people instead of abstract economics.

The harsh reality, of course, is both were cabinet ministers (one under Blair and both under Brown). They aren’t reformers, and a latter-day conversion towards Labour members having a greater say is opportunistic in the extreme. When we see concrete proposals on this ‘having a say’ bit, I’ll be sure to return to it, but the ‘feel’ of their speech is that there may be institutional adjustments and gasping policy announcements and lots of talk about ‘renewal’ but that very little will change. This is virtually inevitable if Brothers Ed and David don’t move beyond Blair – and I don’t think they will or can even imagine how to.

Just as interesting as those who have thrown their hat into the ring is who has not.

Jon Cruddas has ruled himself out of the leadership race, which probably removes the only chance the soft Left ever had at influencing the thing, beyond gushing pronouncements in favour of Ed Miliband, who is viewed as the more Left of the two brothers. Wannabe softie, James Purnell, is pushing the same line as Cruddas at the moment; re-connect with the vote (among C2 voters), move slowly, re-energise the Party. This seems to be standard for the so-called centre Left; thus too pressure group Compass’ post-election statement. Evidently Neal Lawson and the rest of that self-admiring cohort don’t think they’ve done enough damage with their urgings to vote ‘tactically’ for the Lib-Dems, to keep out the Tories.

All of this talk about renewal and reconnecting etc, from the centre-Left, is meant to fill the bloody great hole where actually doing something fits in. Around the world, indefinite strikes have been pronounced – here at home, workers (often against the wishes of their trades unions) are gearing up to fight the incoming cuts, whether from private business or the public sector…and meanwhile the lions of centre-left socialism are doing little but mewl in the press. Which is exactly what I and others expect, so that at least is gratifying.

A centre-Left candidate may yet emerge, of course. In the meantime, those who have been casting rather silly aspersions at John McDonnell’s potential candidacy find themselves in the unenviable position of wanting ‘a clean break from the policies and practices of the New Labour era’ while opposing the only leadership candidate likely to achieve it. Former MP Bob Clay’s article on the subject departs from reality entirely, with a mention of Michael Meacher as a more likely candidate (Meacher got three endorsements and crumbled at the 2007 debate).

McDonnell ran in 2007 and though he failed to get enough endorsements, his campaign was like a fresh wind through the often sterile internal debates of the Labour Party. Even a Cruddas candidacy, though more likely to gain enough nominations, would not necessarily provoke this – Cruddas is, after all, basically a Blairite, and support for him would still place the  soft Left in contradiction to themselves – wanting a change from New Labour, a return to an older form of social democracy, while supporting a candidate who wants nothing of the sort. We’re spared making this argument because Cruddas isn’t running. His own reasoning (if such banalities deserve the title) can be read here.

This makes the attacks against John McDonnell seem all the more surreal. Without an alternative candidate of even basic Left credentials, McDonnell is the natural choice for any socialist remaining in Labour. What all the arguments against McDonnell clearly miss, of course, is the chance that a McDonnell candidacy gives the LRC – a group based around members, union branches and CLPs – to get a foothold in Labour around the country, to kick off real debate and to set up mini-groups of supporters who can deepen and broaden LRC support by campaign activities. Only this long game offers a glimmer of hope for the Left; otherwise they should get out of Labour and stay out.

Key among campaign priorities before the election demanded the full attention of every activist was the People’s Charter, which is solid Left stuff that appeals far beyond the narrow confines of the Labour Representation Committee. This is the sort of thing which could get off the ground, certainly in time for conference in the autumn. What plenty of the nay-sayers also neglect to note is that there are several McDonnell supporters running as the Left candidates for leadership of different unions. Paul Holmes, interviewed here, is a key one, over at UNISON.

This is a chance to energise and mobilise the whole Left – both its union and party elements. Meanwhile those people saying that John McDonnell is hostile to or likely to alienate the unions because of his opposition to union bureaucratisation need to catch themselves on. McDonnell is the only candidate who, as leader, would have any intention of mobilising parliamentary and extra-parliamentary elements of the movement to slam dunk the Trade Union Freedom Bill.

Whatever platitudes we get from the soft-Left, that fear of extra-parliamentary action will always keep them bottled up – that is why we need a candidate like McDonnell. The other regular rebels – like Jeremy Corbyn – will likely fall into line behind McDonnell, especially with the unanimous backing from the LRC’s National Committee put firmly on record, in the aftermath of Saturday’s conference, sponsored by the LRC, whatever remains of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and various unions.

If McDonnell doesn’t win, then Labourites face years of a Tory government whose best friends are the Labour leadership, as under Thatcher and Kinnock, when everything possible was done by the Labour heirarchy to smother mass activism and militancy, in fear that it could damage the credentials of the Party to lead ‘the nation’. Then, I guarantee you, that space outside of Labour for a Left party, which people are saying has closed or is closing, will be blasted wide open in no time at all. Tomorrow’s article concerns just that.