I'm old enough to remember the SDP split on the left.
I am sufficiently troubled by the extraordinary right wing, neoliberal, attitudes of some in the parliamentary Labour Party, and amongst its advisers, to be deeply sceptical of its ability to deliver real change for the people of this country.
I have worked for, and am proud to have worked for the TUC, Unite, PCS, RMT, UCU and other unions. I am a member of Unite.
I fear that reports in the Guardian this morning that Ed Miliband is looking at ways to break Labour's links with the unions.
I find this report, clearly based on a briefing deeply worrying:
The Labour leader, who raised the possibility of corruption in Falkirk, is understood to believe that he must adopt a consistent approach in tackling "unaccountable vested interests".
I think there are few organisations that have had to be more open and accountable in the UK than unions. This suggestion is absurd. There are almost no companies as open as any trade union, no membership organisations as dedicated to democracy and no organisation that has to be more accountable about actions taken. Especially Labour and some right wing factions in it.
Of course Labour could leave the unions behind. But it will cease to be Labour as a result.
And the unions won't sit in a vacuum.
I think the 2015 general election may be interesting. And new parties ride crests of waves. A new one could be on such a crest at the next general election. Labour needs to be very wary of what it is doing right now and if it has any sense at all note its history. It is not Labour without labour. But it is just another flavour of neoliberalism on its own.
That's not what the people of this country need. They need a radical alternative that puts the interests of ordinary people first. Ed Miliband's decision could suggest how they get it.
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He won’t though, Ed’s not a leader. Bring on the anti-neoliberal party!
Richard, I have been thinking and saying. for years now that the Labour party was finished, certainly since 2003 when the sense of it being under corporate capture to the debt peonage schemes of the banking sector became clear. It might have been different under John Smith but the psychopathic Blair (‘Blatcher’ as Oliver James called him) finished the party off. The moment for a Labour revival could have been now as you have pointed out Richard but they have failed the Carpe Diem test yet again. As I have expressed on this blog before, it is not really a straightforward left/right issue anymore and that paradigm needs to be dropped – there are many staunch free marketers in America who are as concerned about the feudalism and serfdom we are living in and this needs to be acknowledged. People of our age (I’m 53) need to let go of any traces of sentimental attachment to the Labour Party of the 1970’s we grew up with and move on! ironically, the very power the Unions were claimed to have in the late 1970’s has now been given over to big finance that is sucking wealth from our society and laundering it on a global basis to much more of a destructive and anti-democratic effect than was ever threatened by undemocratic union practices. I’m glad you are now suggesting that a new party is needed, Richard, you are right. But it can’t, in my view, be modeled on old left/right paradigm it must be modelled on the democratisation of wealth, the creation of genuine money circulation and a central bank that can incentivise the financial system to attain this rather than incentivising them to gamble with free money.
I have to admit to being extremely naive in 2010 – when Ed Miliband won the leadership (with heavy union backing) I thought that was the end for Blairite entryism in the Labour party. I thought the Blairites would give up and go and join the Tories or maybe the Lib Dems. But I’d massively underestimated how deeply the Labour party had been infiltrated by the right. And this means that Ed has been largely hemmed in by his right wing, unable to make a substantial policy shift.
My guess is that soon after Ed won the leadership election a deputation of powerful right-wingers in the party came to see him and said, “toe the line or we will TAKE YOU DOWN… look what happened to Iain Duncan Smith.” With a weak parliamentary support base, Ed was always vulnerable.
He’s done really well on occasion; on phone hacking he was excellent, and the “producers/predators” speech of Party Conference 2011 could have opened up a space for policy radicalism – but was sadly never followed up on in any meaningful way. Instead we get hard right-wingers like Steve Twigg and Liam Byrne calling the shocks. And an economic policy from Ed Balls that has caved into Tory macro austerity (despite being proved right that austerity is an economic disaster) while offering nothing meaningful in the way of microeconomic reforms.
Instead space is taken up by soundbites – I mean, “One Nation Labour”. In retrospect Harold McMillan and Ted Heath look not so bad, but is recycling 1960s Tory slogans really the best Labour can do these days?
It may well be that the union/Labour break won’t be long coming now; on Labour’s part, the Progress right have been pushing him to break the link for years (there is even a Twitter sock puppet account called @BreakTheLink dedicated to this very issue), while on Unite’s part, Len McCluskey is probably looking at the millions of pounds his union donates to Labour every year, asking “what do we get for that money?” and concluding, “not very much.”
A new left party would be free to pursue a radical line and I think this would become popular over time but things would be tough in the short run. I would expect the Labour vote to split three ways; maybe 10-15% for the left party, 10%-15% for “rump new Labour” and the remaining 10% or so simply bailing out to other parties in exasperation (the Lib Dems, God help us, could be beneficiaries of a split). I think the Tories would probably win a majority at the next election if there were a split.
In the long run, the experience of unmitigated Tory rule – with all the neoliberal extremism and authoritarianism that implies – would galvanise the British left, probably along the lines of the Syriza coalition in Greece – but in the short run there is a terrible price to pay. Make no mistake, people are going to die as a direct result of govt policies if the Tories get in in 2015. Some are dying already because (e.g.) their benefits have been stopped – but we ain’t seen nothing yet compared to what’s in store after 2015, believe me. So while a Labour/union split could be beneficial for British politics in the long run, there is a huge price to pay in the short run.
The unions are complicit in the transformation of the labour party to a neoliberal organisation. It is my view that the unions should have ditched the labour party long ago and should set up a fresh left wing alternative which will represent their members and working people generally. Let the labour party get its money from its masters, if they can. Good luck with that. We are long past the point of choosing to support the lesser evil, and the whole debate is framed by right wing ideologues who have no interest in democracy; and a lot of people who have no understanding of the nature of democracy, so far as I can tell. It is time we had a real debate about what it is we are supposed to value and subscribe to: and it is not rampant atomisation of people in the name of rendering groups impotent of irrelevant: you won’t catch the right wing corporate interest agreeing to divest itself of group action whether through money or lobbying or both.
That ship has sailed Richard, this is about managing a story in the press.
Many in the Labour leadership, some of whom are in the shadow cabinet, some sniping from the sidelines, were seduced by neo-liberalism until the crash.
I think most now know it was a mistaken belief but can’t break with the past because their political careers are at stake – and that overrides reason, compassion and evidence. Leadership sometimes means playing the long game, sacrificing ones own political prospects to argue for the greater good – i don’t see many of those people in the House of Commons.
Richard, you know my views on the links with the Unions: like you, I’m a member of UNITE, which I joined when it was MSF. The Unions certainly can be bloody-minded, obstructive, obsessed with differentials and demarcation disputes, but the fact remains that, with all their failings, they remain the last real bastion of freedom against an over-mighty state. And also, they have, again despite their failings, been the bed-rock of commonsense in politics for so many years, as Ernie Bevin demonstrated to the Nazi-sympathizing upper crust before WW2, and as Trade Union leaders opposed to self-destructive austerity demonstrate now, for austerity is actually the act of sawing off the branch on which you are sitting, but from the wrong side (or is it that the 1% are on the right/Right side – in every sense – and the 99% are on the wrong side?)
It is no co-incidence that tyrants and dictators take aim first at Unions, as the famous Pastor Niemoller quote “First they came” shows, for the unionists are high on the list.
Also, all the middle class need to understand that without Union power and sacrifice (e.g. the Tolpuddle martyrs, the dockers’ and match-girls’ strikes), and the Chartists, in the 19th century, the 1% of those days would NEVER have ceded even an ounce of power, and we would now be ruled by Lord this and Lady that – descendants of the bandits who came over with William the Conqueror and stole the land they still own.
And THIS is what Cameron and his gang are bent on – a new Norman invasion, not of landed aristocracy, this time, but financial aristocracy – infinitely worse, since at least land produced food and materials and work for some, where a financial aristocracy is only shuffling about figments of the imagination, which magically turn into gold for them along the way, but leave everyone else impoverished.
My take on this breaking of the link is clear – if it happens, I resign my membership of the Labour Party forthwith, and join the Green Party.
Why are you waiting? Since Labour endorse austerity, started the privatisation of the NHS and have done little to seriously oppose the Health & Social Care Bill, introduced acadamies that are clearly the route to privatising education – why on earth stay with Labour? Move to the Green party now- and lets hope Unite start funding the Green Party.
I could not agree more with the need for a radical new party based on the fundamental principle of putting people first – which does not exclude presenting those same people with the hard choices necessary to reach the point where the obstacles presented by neo-liberalism and its evils have been overcome. It saddens me to say that the current Labour Party simply doesn’t have the courage to be that radical new party.
I said in another comment some time ago that “reasonable” Labour and Conservative politicians could work together to form the basis of a new party. Margaret Hodge and Sarah Woolaston on Question Time this week demonstrated that point, I believe.
I agree Nick – It is not simply about left/right anymore and we must welcome those that want a vibrant free market into the fold of resistance, genuine ‘capitalism’ rather than hedge funds disguised as banks. The neo-lib project is moving forward at a startling pace with a propaganda machine the Nazis would have been proud of and a dumbed-down populace that are putty – it is very scary. Any decent people that still walk the halls of westminster seem invisible. Unfortunately these ghastly people that trigger the gag reflex in us are seen as ‘realists’ by many who have grown up with neoliberalism, they don’t see how evil they are.
As with austerity, Blu Labour are perpetuating libertarian myths about unions and their relationship with Labour rather than challenging and fighting them. Just as Labour allowed to take root the myth that it was the powers given to the majority, the unionised workforce, in the 1970s that led to the country’s economic and social malaise then, so they are allowing to take root the myth that public spending has led to our current situation. Union activity in the 1970s took place against a management structure in nationalised industries that was carried over from mismanaged private industry structure; that is why those industries were nationalised. Yet, unlike in Germany where good industrial relations were fostered by Will Brandt’s government allowing worker representation on boards, that was resisted in UK. For example, private UK motor companies got into huge financial trouble in 1960s, which is why BL was formed. But the same essential management structure was kept, insisting on putting profit before productivity and quality, unlike German manufacturers. At the same time the Labour government was implementing a plan approved by economic libertarians at the IMF of sterling devaluation and inflating away debt. That put a huge strain on workers’ finances. Management would not approve inflation matching rises so the unions, lacking board representation as in Germany, chose strike action. That gave rise to militant unions over playing their card, at most. Instead of negotiating a German style approach, Thatcher went to war with unions, one reason why we lost huge swathes of UK owned industry; unions fought to keep them in UK hands. Ipso facto we now have a right wing Labour party trying to ape Thatcher’s stance. Blu Labour are ‘picking a fight’ with the unions just as the unions are gaining in strength and popularity. The public trust union leaders more than politicians; does this explains the approach Miliband is taking towards them? http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/07/01/three-myths-about-the-popularity-and-relevance-of-trade-unions-and-labour/
Richard,
The New Labour party, the LibDems, the Tory party work hand in hand. We live in a one party state, this has always been the case, the Labour party did ONCE to some extent try and break this (Attlee government), sadly, they failed.
Our modern day problems with the Labour party didn’t start with Blair, the bad seed was Hugh Gateskill, indeed, Thatcherism should really be called Gateskillism. But, the really evil seed that has done so much to destroy any semblance of socialism in the creation of New Labour was Denis Healey. Just like Blair, he paid a visit to the USA he came back with very right wing views, strange to say the least!!!.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUgaitskell.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhealeyD.htm
One of the founder members of the SDP…
“Lord Owen was chairman of Yukos International UK BV, a division of the former Russian petroleum company Yukos, from 2002 to 2005.[citation needed] and a member of the board of Abbott Laboratories, a US healthcare company, from 1996-2011. He is currently non-executive chairman of Europe Steel Ltd and consultant to Epion Holdings, owned by Alisher Usmanov. In late 2009, Owen accepted a seat on the board of Texas-based Hyperdynamics Corporation, an oil concern with an exclusive lease to an offshore area of the Republic of Guinea in west Africa..[citation needed]”
http://uk.ask.com/wiki/David_Owen
A visit and search “Alisher Usmanov” at Craig Murray, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist web site will produce some interesting reading!!!.
To answer the question posed, yes.
Unlike Howard, I had no delusions about MilibandE, having met him at the Treasury when he was Chair of the Treasury Advisers (post Ed Balls). He’s a nice guy, but…
I’m afraid there’s no point in the unions breaking away from Labour because at the end of the day it’s capitalism itself, to which they all subscribe, which must be replaced. Having a separate class to own ‘capital’ from those who use it (just like land) is just not a good system. But we’re miles away from finding a consensus on the alternative.
carol – People like Henry George, as you know, wanted a Capitalism that circulated wealth, this is possible. It is a great irony that Thatcher’s hero wrote a book called ‘The Road to Serfdom’ not realising that she was unleashing the means to the same. I think a ‘consensus’ is only possible if we abandon the left/right paradigm and focus on how wealth can genuinely circulate, that way the former left will find common ground with many free-marketers in America who want to challenge the prevailing hegemony. Like you, I think we are miles away but all challengers to the neo-lib concensus need to get together on this without a ‘socialist’ flag, which I feel, only aids the neo-lib cause.
The right in the US (which, of course, include both major parties – and in fact the majority of LVT campaigners everywhere) do not want anything but the most basic public goods and services. I cannot see how we can have anything in common with them.
And what is wrong with the Green Party as an alternative party? Is it the spat in Brighton with the Union? Surely climate change, resource depletion, the deterioration of our local communities, and economic equality are the most important problems that we face. And these are all main issues that the Greens want to tackle. I am completely astonished and devastated that voters have ignored this and gone further to the right.
The storm in the tea cup that is Falkirk is ridiculous as is the Labour Party leadership’s response.
This is a Blairite conspiracy to muzzle the unions.
What is the point of the Labour Party without the unions?
The Blairite agenda alone would result in a grey pastice of the Tory party, “Blue” instead of “nu” Labour.
I think the Unions should remove funding from the Labour party with immediate effect.
Why support an abomination that does not really have the interests of ordinary people at heart?
Richard,
thanks for that.
I grew up in the 1970s. I sometimes feel shocked & horrified by how far politics have shifted to the right. More importantly, I feel shocked & horrified by how we, culturally, have changed for the worse.
When I was a lad, among the views that seemed so commonplace as not to deserve a second glance were;
1 education is, of itself, good. You can never know too much
2 Following on from the above, opportunities for education should always be available to all citizens
3 We are, genuinely, in it all together. You may be poor, rich, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu etc & of any ethnicity but you are part of this country
4 The Law is available to all. Be you so high, be you so low, the law is above you & all men are equal before it.
5 The NHS is free for all at their point of need. This was one of the things our grandparents fought for in 1939-45.
Well, under the Coalition it seems clear that most of those are no longer valid & while, in fairness, Clegg has put his foot down a couple of times, what is clear is that NONE of them will be valid if the Tories win the next election. So far as their concerned;
1 Education is valuable to the extent that it makes you employable
2 There is, therefore, no need to offer education not directly linked to employment
3 We like to separate out the working classes
4 Anyone can GO to law, obviously those without funds will be wasting their time, but they still may go there, in the same way as I could go to Glyndebourne without a ticket
5 Ha ha ha ha ha ha
I agree with some of this; when I was at grammar school we were consistently told the aim of our education was to make us useful to an employer.
Mind you, I was amused that the MP for Falkirk, Eric Joyce, has described UNITE’s actions as “irresponsible”. That should certainly be a wake-up call.
Allowing that the only reason there is a by-election is that Mr Joyce is incapable of
either staying sober or, having had a drink, refraining from thumping people, this is akin to Tony Blair saying “I don’t think you’re a very principled person” or Simon Cowell saying “I couldn’t manage you, you’re so unmusical”.
Time for the unions to break with the Labour Party and fund the NHA party.
Ed Miliband seems to have forgotten that if it wasn’t for the unions, his brother would be leader of the Labour Party.
Richard, this is a trend that appears to be happening right across the Western world. I’ve been following a little of what’s been happening in Italy (very difficult to make sense of at the best of times – and that’s coming from an Italian 🙂 )
The socialist/left-wing party there has taken on board the policies of its predecessor – the Mario Monti government (I don’t have enough expletives to describe what I think of that man and his hoons). This is despite the fact that the Italians clearly rejected Monti. And yes, a new political force has emerged that could and most likely would make the necessary changes that could save the Italian economy (like leaving the Euro) – The 5 star movement under Beppe Grillo – which I believe got 25% of the vote. Infuriatingly the neoliberal forces have managed to sideline this powerful new movement…for now. Part of the blame, I have to say must go to the 5 star movement. On their own they didn’t have the numbers to rule in their own right. Their unwillingness to compromise or work with any other party, has given the imbeciles(neo-liberals) a free rein. And while that’s happening, people continue to lose jobs, go hungry and yes even take their lives out of desperation.
As an outsider to the British political scene, my advice to you folks is this: learn from the mistakes of the 5 star movement in Italy. If you form a new political party/movement (which there are signs is happening), you don’t have to sell your soul in order to gain power. As long as you decide on what are the ‘must-haves’, the core elements or planks of your party, you can negotiate or trade on the peripheries, those things that are less important or can wait. Achieving those core things will build trust in your movement, such that at future elections you may win the trust of the general population and win government in your own right.
reading through these posts, I get a strong sense that many are in a state of mourning and loss and almost reluctance to let go of Labour, especially those, like me who grew up in the 70’s and feel deep betrayal. This ‘betrayal’ happened years ago and we should not be surprised at the pathetic sight of Labour kissing the neo-liberal posterior.
What I find interesting and exciting and rather counter-intuitive, is that not only do we have to ditch Labour but I feel we have to ditch the old left/right paradigm as we now have many allies on the ‘right’ in America who are fighting the same cause as us – we need to talk this on board. The neo-liberal zombies can easily fight back the ‘left’ and we see the Tories still doing this by setting up a straw man ‘left’ Labour. If there is opposition that isn’t based on this old paradigm then the neo-libs won’t have an answer. I’ve shocked myself, who comes from a left background at how much I find myself agreeing with people like Karl Denninger who are challenging neo-liberalism and who was a founder of the Tea-Party (but left it because it was taken over by Republicans)..we need to reframe the whole thing.
I have read all the comments on this blog, and in common with other posts/comments here over the last few months it is clear that people are crying out for a new party.
I agree with Simon when he says…
“it is not really a straightforward left/right issue anymore and that paradigm needs to be dropped”
I agree with Nick when he says…
“I could not agree more with the need for a radical new party based on the fundamental principle of putting people first”
It is impossible to argue with Rodney Bants’ contribution.
I agree with Anthony’s advice.
The time has come for people to stop talking about the hope of something new, hold a wake to bury the dear old thing that is not what it was, and to take action.
Is there time before May 2015? Yes! All things are possible. If you need evidence, a Brit has just won Wimbledon for goodness sake!
There are some very interesting and intelligent posts on this thread, but there doesnt seem to be any condemnation of Unite’s actions? It seems that perhaps the Labour leadership have reacted rather agressively, but aren’t Unite also gulity here?
I remain a little bemused – quite genuinely – about what Unite has been accused of
If it used people’s names without permission clearly that was wrong
Otherwise signing people up for Labour was exactly what Labour had asked them to do
Me too, Richard. When I sent out a comment by Pete Willsman (of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy) querying the hounding of Unite, one member told me off for supporting fraud! And now Miliband is trying to hang himself by further restricting the flow of union money to Labour! I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that Labour will lose the general election – and will deserve to do so. It’s almost unbearable.