The best reaction to Miliband's speech that I have read comes from Gregor Gall, professor of industrial relations at the University of Bradford, writing in the Guardian:
Miliband is trying to solve a political problem with an administrative solution. If he wants to go back to the days when Labour was a mass party with substantial roots in working-class communities, he needs to recognise that this existed primarily because Labour was then a social democratic party which reformed the capitalist system. This was not revolution but it did mean that people's life chances were not determined by the market.
There is no way that a mass of citizens, union members or not, will flock back to supporting Labour — much less join and become active members — until its politics fundamentally change in this direction. This is why the maelstrom that Falkirk has unleashed is not about candidate selection or even candidate composition. Rather, it is about political values.
Labour must adopt the politics of hope and ambition to make citizens' lives better through regulating the processes and outcomes of the market. This was the lesson of Blairism: membership dramatically increased up to and after 1997 when Blair entered Downing Street. But it did not take long for it and party activism to go into reverse as it became clear that Blairism was not about radical social change but holding political power.
That's pretty close to what I have been seeking to say.
This is not an admin issue. This is really about politics. Can Labour entice 3 million to join with its current policies? I don't think it has a hope.
It will keep Lord Sainsbury's money, but that's not the point. It's the union members that matter - and right now Labour is selling them short on too many economic fronts.
I welcome the idea of mass based parties. But that requires politics for the masses when right now most of it is for the 1%. And that's the real issue here. Admin can't change that. Only political will can achieve that goal.
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So, if I read this right, union members could be put in the position where they forget or are not aware that they can opt out of paying the political levy. But they could also then forget or not be made aware that they can also opt in to being an affiliate Labour party member, conveniently leaving them with no say in how their political levy contribution is being used?
Possibly!
I have not been able to discover what UNITE is supposed to have done wrong. But I am fairly sure that if the Labour party forfeit the political levy (which is hardly a secret and has not, so far as I know, been a cause for dissatisfaction on the part of those it concerns) they will find themselves very poor. Where does he intend to get funding from? The tooth fairy?
There are so many low paid jobs now where people are not represented by Unions that it will be difficult to get working people united on this issue. Union member ship has halved in the last 30 years and many disgruntled working people in debt peonage focus their wrath on those worse off with Government propaganda and the gutter press riding high. Labour are utterly supine in the face of this as usual – all that is left is to hope the food bank supplies do not run out, keep on donating if we’re not using them ourselves.
As Billy Hayes pointed out yesterday on the Today program, Stanley Baldwin stopped the automatic opt-in back in 1927, as a way of attacking the Labour party, and it was the 1945-51 government that restored it. If we had a Labour party that wasn’t so supine (another of the poisonous legacies of New Labour) they’d have used this issue as a way of pointing out the utter hypocrisy of the right over party funding, pointing out that the Tories & UKIP are far less open in how they get their money, and that most of this money now comes from City financiers; the same people whose free market ideology got us into the mess we’re now in.
Why don’t Labour point out that in the EU only the UK, Malta and Luxembourg governments oppose the Robin Hood tax, for example? How’s that for an example of how the Tories (and UKIP) are in absolute thrall to the financial sector?
Richard,
I completely agree with what Professor Gall has written and your comments on his thoughts. But where does that leave the 99%, us? If I were in Mr Cameron’s shoes I would wait for the funding change to happen and immediately call a snap election. Who could vote for a suicidal loser? That would give me another five years to pillage the NHS and institute all of Mr Ian Nazi-Smiths reforms and allow my backers another five years of tax avoidance. Who knows, maybe we could get the Post Office registered in the Caymans? As a Unite member I find it hard to believe that they voted for this wally. I suppose my GS will have to look for another party to support and write to the membership to support them.
Miliband appaers to be using this as a convenient excuse to break the link between the unions and the Labou party. It appears that the Labour party are still obsessed with neoliberalism. This seems apparent with their disgraceful endorsement of public sector cuts which they will keep if they were to acheive power.
This is, I believe, a thumbs-up to the City to state that “we’re still on your side, lads”.
The TUC should call Labour’s bluff and announce plans to form a breakaway socialist party.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Miliband had no intention of adopting policies that benefit the working man. In fact, Labour policy is merely a diet of pretty much the same thing as thing as this government’s policies.
Nationalisation of the railways? a no-brainer! Nationalisation of the utilities? a no-brainer! There would be massive support for these policies. Therefore, why is Miliband so utterly determined to keep on persuing neoliberalist policies?
I fear a breakaway socialist party formed by the unions may be the only realistic option.