UNISON on Tuesday morning - a good start in Brighton

30 years ago, I attended my first trade union conference as a delegate. It was NALGO’s penultimate conference, in Bournemouth. I attended the last NALGO conference the following year, and from 1994 onwards I was present at every UNISON conference as either a branch or regional delegate or as an NEC member, until 2017 when I stood down from my UNISON positions.

In all those years, attending all those Conferences, I have never heard as interesting, as informative and as political a speech moving UNISON's accounts as I heard today from the Chair of the UNISON NEC Finance Committee, Dan Sartin.

Dan explained that the new NEC are committed to using UNISON's robust financial position to increase our industrial action fund so that we can support our members when they are driven to take action by the cost of living crisis. He emphasised the correct decision of the NEC to double the rate of strike pay and make it payable from the first day of any action. He made clear that the Industrial Action Committee will be reviewing their procedures to ensure that UNISON can more readily support branches wanting to take strike action.

Dan also committed the NEC to keeping the new regime for branch funding under review to make sure that it meets the needs of our members and their branches. He also put down a marker that, just as the NEC would be looking to shift money from its reserves into the industrial action fund, so it would want to consult branches about how to make constructive use of the millions of pounds sitting in bank accounts at branch level.

With inflation reaching levels never before seen during the lifetime of UNISON, our members will be driven to fight for fair pay or see living standards fall through the floor. It is reassuring to know that the union’s finances are in the custody of lay members who know that the resources of our trade union exist for the benefit of the members of our trade union.

It was also good to hear the chair of the NEC Finance Committee committing themselves to improving lay governance and transparency in the management of UNISON resources. As a long serving former NEC member I know that previous NECs failed over and over again to exercise adequate control over the resources of the union, allowing officers to spend millions without any proper accountability. For the first time since vesting day in 1993, I have some confidence that our lay National Executive may be able to assert the control it ought to have over expenditure in UNISON.

Dan described himself, with characteristic self-deprecation, as merely the “warm-up act" for our president, Paul Holmes. Paul went on to give what I can honestly say was the best presidential address I have ever heard, heartfelt, funny, honest and to the point.

The beginning of Paul’s speech was marred by a poorly organised and clumsily executed attempt at a walkout by a small minority of delegates, with a few more standing up and turning their backs. This feeble little protest, the organisation of which demonstrated the tin ear of whose ever idea it was, fizzled out as a far larger number of delegates insisted that they wanted to hear from Paul, who went on to cover a wide range of topics in a highly personal and enormously engaging address.

Paul drew on the past wisdom of Jack London, Napoleon and Oscar Wilde (among others), to talk about the sort of trade union we need and the sort of trade unionists we need to be. Characteristically, he cited comments from ordinary members to illustrate the points he needed to make about the cost of living crisis and how our trade union needs to respond.

I have to say that I never thought to see such a stirring socialist speech from a UNISON president. Meaning no disrespect to Paul's many predecessors, but I often used to struggle to pay attention to the presidential address which, in the past, sometimes seemed to simply be a way of taking up time that would have been better spent debating motions.

This year delegates were treated to a truly rousing introduction to our Conference by our most senior elected lay official.

Given my state of health it is likely that this will be the last year that I will hear the opening of UNISON National Delegate Conference (certainly the last year in which I will hear this in person). I could not imagine a better conclusion to a lifetime of attending Conference.

Whatever happens in the remainder of the week - and Conference does seem to be moving back into a mode in which actual debates take place where people disagree with one another - UNISON members can rest assured that they have elected an NEC which is well-led and committed to preparing for the struggles to come.

UNISON Conference and motions 10 and 11

Yesterday, the first day of UNISON's annual Local Government Conference at the Brighton Centre was greeted, in appropriate local style, by the annual naked bike ride.

This helps to demonstrate that Brighton is more fun every week than any conference any week.

Some delegates, gathering for the full national delegate conference, which starts tomorrow (Tuesday) morning won’t have noticed the naked bike ride of course.

In particular, supporters of motions 10 and 11, which are due to be debated on Tuesday morning, and which are critical of, and seek (albeit ineffectively) to overturn decisions made by the new left-led NEC last October, wouldn’t have noticed that the bike riders were naked, even had they seen them.

This is because they know that, prior to the results of the 2021 UNISON NEC elections, everything in UNISON was already for the best, in the best of all possible trade unions. Members were joyful at the rate of strike pay (then £25 a day) and were regularly holding street parties to celebrate their satisfaction with the arrangements UNISON had in place for providing legal advice to our members.

Best of all, UNISON members could celebrate a reduction in real pay of 20% over the preceding 20 years, under the leadership of successive NECs on which the left had been a marginalised minority.

Supporters of motions 10 and 11 at this year's UNISON National Delegate Conference could, at that time, see that our former NEC, far from being naked and denuded of imagination and hope for our members, were clothed in the most beautiful garments, befitting the most fabulous leadership of any trade union in the history of the world.

That is why they are so sharply critical of the new left-led NEC who, to their eyes, are clad in drab, every day garb and are simply doing foolish things like increasing strike pay, and agreeing to review our arrangements for legal advice for our members.

Had any of the most vigorous supporters of motions 10 and 11 been able to tear themselves away from Twitter or Facebook for long enough to notice yesterday's bike ride, they would not therefore have seen the flabby bits and dangly bits of passing cyclists. On the contrary, they would have been astonished at the fine silks, bejewelled headdresses and generally fabulous attire as the bike ride went past.

Perhaps then, it is as well that these UNISON members were spared seeing the naked bike ride, so that they could continue to comfort themselves with their memories of the perfection that was UNISON before June 2021, and therefore continue to plot how they would try (and fail) to bring down UNISON’s elected NEC and try (and fail) to prevent it giving greater control of our trade union to our members.

Those of us who know that UNISON stood in need of the very real change which the new NEC is trying to embark upon, will not be likely to fall for the nonsense of motions 10 and 11. 

The UNISON bureaucracy may well still control large parts of the lay structure of our trade union and can continue to work with the remnants of UNISON's “Ancien Regime” to block, obstruct and obfuscate as the NEC tries to make necessary change, but activists need to stand firm and press ahead with a positive and progressive agenda reflecting the interests of UNISON members, rather than pander to the anguish and angst of those who feel that their entitlement to be in charge has been trampled on.

Celebrate the Jubilee? Abolish the Monarchy!

I was finally able today to take a call from "Labour for a New Democracy", who are lobbying for UNISON conference delegates to re-prioritise motion 102 at National Delegate Conference, which only stands any chance of getting debated if it is reprioritised for the Friday afternoon.

I am not at all unsympathetic to the arguments for electoral reform for the Westminster Parliament. It is, noteworthy that every new legislature created in the past generation in the United Kingdom has not been created with the "first past the post" voting system.

However, this weekend more than any other, I can't help feeling that there is more to new democracy in the UK than changing the voting system for the House of Commons. 

Because New Labour started, but did not finish, reforming the House of Lords we are now saddled with a larger second chamber which consists very largely of appointees, plus a small number of people who continue to attend due to an accident of birth. 

The only element of democracy in the Upper House are the by-elections which take place when one of the hereditary peers dies (and in which only certain hereditary peers can vote), an arrangement that would seem far-fetched if it were the plot of an Ealing comedy (which in fact, it almost is). 

Today, in the third decade of the 21st-century, there are more unelected legislators in the House of Lords then there are Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. This is hardly a sign of a healthy, vibrant modern democracy.

The House of Lords is not the only archaic, undemocratic feature of the British constitution which needs to be swept away if Labour is really going to be about a "New Democracy”. 

The Corporation of the City of London stands out as a local authority in which businesses as well as citizens still have a vote, and also as the only local authority which has, for centuries, had an official seated in the House of Commons (“the Remembrancer”) to protect its interests from elected Members of Parliament.

The Corporation - which it was Labour Party policy to abolish until Tony Blair was elected Leader - maintains that there is nothing untoward about the presence of the Remembrancer in the House of Commons, but no other local authority has such an official (and other local authorities, for all their flaws, are elected democratically by citizens).

Except of course, in another of the offensive and archaic features of our constitution none of us are citizens. We are subjects of the Crown and the Crown in Parliament is sovereign. No Bill before Parliament can become an Act without Royal Assent, and, whilst I was taught when I did “O-level” Politics that this was a mere formality, we now know that the Royal family can - and do -intervene much earlier in the legislative process to protect their particular, and very considerable, interests.

The real political power of our Royal Family is not, however, only used in a venal way to protect their own financial interests. Within living memory, in 1975, the Governor General of Australia, using the powers of the sovereign, dismissed an elected Labor government and appointed the Opposition Leader as Prime Minister without an election. The real power of the sovereign and of the Royal Family is clearly not something that we have left behind in the Middle Ages.

A hereditary head of state is an anomaly in 2022 and an absurd hangover from an age of Empire which is a bloody stain upon the history of this country. The Royal Family themselves offer nothing to the people of the United Kingdom (or of any other territory of which the Queen is Head of State) except that they stand at the apex of a system designed to hold back effective democracy that would place power in the hands of the people.

That's why I am very pleased that my local Labour Party has voted to support Labour for a Republic, the campaign group that seeks to commit our party to support the abolition of the monarchy. This won't find favour with the weak hearted souls who crave popularity in the moment, but it is the only honest position for a socialist who understands how power is wielded by the ruling class and who genuinely wants to change our society.

I won't live to see the end of the British monarchy, but I hope that my children shall. We will not be able to transform our society until we can drag it, kicking and screaming if needs be, at least into the 20th century if not the 21st.

If you knew your history...

 

More than 31 years ago, in March 1991, Labour Briefing carried the report above about goings-on in what was then the single Brighton Constituency Labour Party, which had been suspended six months beforehand..

There is nothing new about the Labour Party seeking to close down its own democratic structures in order to isolate or eliminate the influence of socialist ideas.

Socialism is, however, unavoidably part of the Labour Party for as long as the Labour Party is the party of the organised working class. Furthermore, other routes to socialism through other political parties are at best pointless diversions.

That's why socialists in Brighton did not abandon their commitment to the Labour Party in the early 1990s but continued to fight for socialist politics and the election of Labour candidates locally and nationally.

Socialists in Brighton and elsewhere must continue to orient ourselves towards the Labour Party and the trade unions as well as other progressive single issue campaigns.

Like the man said…

Trade union membership: plus ca change...

Whilst everyone else is waiting for the publication of the Sue Gray report, your blogger has noticed today's annual publication of the official report on trade union statistics.

There's not a lot of change, although the recent trend to small increases in union membership has been reversed in 2021. The proportion of employees that were union members has also fallen this year, with a decrease of 0.6 percentage points to 23.1% in 2021. This follows a 0.2 percentage point increase to 23.7% in the previous year. Employee numbers overall rose in 2021, so this fall in employee union membership density is a consequence of both rising employee numbers and falling union membership among employees.

Women are more likely than men to be trade union members. However, the proportion of female employees who are members of trade unions decreased by 0.9 percentage points to 26.3% in 2021, its lowest rate since 2018. The number of UK female employees who were union members fell by 60,000 to 3.66 million in 2021, falling from the record high of 3.72 million in 2020. The fall in female membership makes up 97% of the total fall across all employees. Meanwhile, the proportion of UK male employees who were in a trade union in 2021 decreased marginally to 20.0%, representing a new low across comparable statistics going back to 1995. Membership levels for male employees decreased by 2,000 on the year to 2.78 million in 2021.

Black workers are more likely than white workers to be trade union members, although this is not true for Asian workers. The proportion of employees who were trade union members was highest in the Black or Black British ethnic group (29.0%), followed by the White ethnic group (23.3%). Trade union membership density was lowest among the ‘Chinese or other ethnic group’ employees, at just 15.3%. Mixed and Asian and Asian British Employees made up the middle ground at 20.6% and 20.3%, respectively, but both were below the national average (23.1%).

These differences by race and gender probably reflect the distribution by gender and ethnicity of the workforce between more and less unionised sectors. The proportions of employees who belong to a trade union were highest in the Education sector at 49.4%. Followed by Human health and social work activities (39.2%), public administration and defence (38.6%) and transportation and storage (36.6%) all being significantly higher than membership density across all employees (23.1%).

Older employees make up a larger proportion of trade union members than younger employees. Of employees who were trade union members in 2021: 

• 4.3% were aged between 16 and 24. 
• 19.8% were aged between 25 and 34 
• 34.8% were aged between 35 to 49, and 
• 41.1% were aged 50 or older.

That the likelihood of an employee being a trade union member increases with age accords with the data showing that employees who have longer lengths of service with an employer are more likely to be a member of a trade union. 24.9% of employees who were trade union members in 2021 had between 10 and 20 years of service, while those with tenure of 20 years or more accounted for 22.5% of total employee union membership. These are significantly higher than the percentages comprised of those with less than 1 year and between 1 and 2 years of service tenure at 7.4% and 6.4%, respectively (Table 3.1).

Trade union density varies considerably across the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. Wales had the highest proportions of employees that were trade union members at 35.6%, followed by Merseyside (32.6%), Northern Ireland (31.4%) and South Yorkshire (31.3%). Inner London had the lowest proportion of workers affiliated to a trade union at just 14.7%, with the South East (17.4%) and Outer London (19.9%) not far behind.

These figures are similar to what we have seen over recent years. Our trade union movement is ageing and, if not shrinking, then certainly not growing in a healthy way. The same challenges we have faced for the past few decades continue to confront us.

Labour Briefing - Rest in Power

I am indebted to Mike Phipps and Labourhub for publishing my memories of involvement with Labour Briefing, alongside those of other comrades more centrally involved in the project over 40 years.

The occasion for our trip down memory lane was the news that the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) will no longer regularly be producing the magazine of which it took control 10 years ago. This would seem to be but one manifestation of a journey to the political margins which I only hope that LRC members will be able to reverse.

I won't repeat here what you can read elsewhere. However, in remembering the past of Labour Briefing I had cause to review past issues of the journal. Whilst the Labour Left is now (still) in a stronger position than at any time (before 2015) since the early 1980s (in spite of the best efforts of the witch hunters), looking back at Briefing in the late 80s and early 90s (at a time of equally vigorous witch hunting) it is obvious that we are not more advanced politically.

Our anti-imperialism was more clear-cut than it is now. Our support for equality was for collective struggles around liberation politics, not bogged down in a zero-sum game of identity politics. Our orientation to the Labour Party was principled and was also maintained by comrades who might themselves have been excluded or expelled, but who never thought that the struggle was primarily about themselves as individuals.

Somehow we managed to practice these politics retaining a sense of humour and being able to disagree whilst respecting each other's positions. No doubt the degeneration of the politics of the left reflects retreats and defeats in the material class struggle, from which the unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership in 2015 could provide no more than a brief respite.

However, if socialists in the Labour Party are to make ourselves useful to future struggles we will need to recapture something of the spirit of Labour Briefing in the 1980s and 1990s and apply it afresh to meet the challenges of the 2020s and 2030s.

How can Labour win?

 

Today I have completed a course of palliative radiotherapy on the secondary tumour in my upper right arm. I hope not only that this will reduce the pain I have been experiencing, but also that comrades will accept this as a good reason not to have been out and about campaigning in the run-up to today's local elections.

We do not, of course, have elections in Brighton and Hove today, although there is a by-election over in Rottingdean. Labour has an excellent local candidate with a firm base on which to build from the last local elections three years ago.

In those elections the headline news in Rottingdean was the triumph of an independent candidate who topped the poll and seemed to take votes exclusively from the Tories. However, Labour increased our share of the vote with a swing from the Tories of over 10%.

This time, with only one seat up for grabs in the ward right wing voters will not be able to split their votes between the Tories and the independent and will have to choose one or the other. This is the basis on which it is possible to hope that a good campaign in support of a good local candidate could deliver a truly phenomenal result for Labour.

If you had told me, more than 40 years ago when I joined the Labour party in Brighton that I might ever even speculate about a Labour Councillor in Rottingdean, I would've thought that you were mad. 

If that possibility is still perhaps a little remote, then I have to say that the very real likelihood of a Labour Council in Worthing is something that would have seemed equally absurd back in the 1980s.

Whilst there is no doubt the demographic changes arising from people moving out of Brighton and Hove and along the coast in each direction underpin Labour’s improved electoral performance elsewhere on the Sussex coast, there is a more immediate factor at work in accounting for the amazing change in Worthing, where we elected the first Labour Councillor since the 1970s only in 2017.

This was explained to my local party branch by a speaker from Worthing at a recent meeting. The party membership locally grew massively in both 2015 and 2016, around the two leadership elections, as local people joined the party to support Jeremy Corbyn in the elections. This gave the Labour Party the campaign resources to maximise the benefit of the increasingly favourable terrain within which they were campaigning.

Whereas, in Brighton and Hove, the emerging ascendancy of the left witnessed a vile backlash, culminating, though not ending, in the unjustified suspension of the City Party following untruthful allegations in 2016, in Worthing it seems that established party members were able to welcome new and returning members and have subsequently campaigned in a united and comradely fashion, increasing our representation on the council year-on-year until we are now on the brink of unprecedented success.

Whilst the different electoral fortunes of our Party in Brighton and Hove, when compared with Worthing, are best explained by the very different context (specifically the presence and rise of the Green Party, who are adept at appealing to voters to the right as well as the left), I don't doubt that we would have been, and would now be, in a better position if we were not as divided as we plainly have been and continue to be.

The Labour Party is - and always has been - a coalition of social democrats and democratic socialists (including Marxists such as myself) and if we are to be believed when we contend that we could provide good leadership locally or nationally the least we ought to be able to do is to get along with one another. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely both locally and nationally.

Encouraged by the victory of their chosen candidate in the leadership election two years ago, and enthused (somewhat mysteriously) by the spectacle of the uninspired and uninspiring national leadership with which we are now saddled, Labour’s right-wing, using their control of the party machine, have embarked upon an attack on all socialists which shows no sign of abating.

At a local and national level unjustified disciplinary action against left-wing activists is sadly all too common and numerous socialists are regrettably giving our unfortunate leadership what they want by leaving the Labour Party and wandering off into political irrelevance.

We should be able, overall, to improve upon the good results of the 2018 local elections because the Tory government is doing so much damage to itself. This will hardly be a vote of confidence in Labour's leadership but it will still be good news for all those who want a change of Government.

For my part, I shall be looking forward to hearing good results from comrades in Worthing not just because I rejoice in any progress for socialism in Sussex but also because it seems to me that they are showing the rest of us how to get along with each other and advance the interests of our party and our class.

Update on Friday, the 6th of May

I was overly pessimistic about the outcome of the Rottingdean by-election. Labour’s excellent candidate, Robert McIntosh, increased the Labour vote compared to 2019, beating the Independent candidate who had hoped to capitalise on the 2019 result by nearly a hundred votes. The Tories took third place which must mean some red faces above blue rosettes.

This campaign was a fine example of the local party pulling together and it's a positive sign going in to next years citywide local elections, which will of course be fought on new ward boundaries. 

Interestingly, the modest Green vote was down compared to 3 years ago, suggesting that next year we may hope to see a repeat of the decline in their vote which we saw last time there was a Green administration in the town hall.

Congratulations to Robert on achieving something I didn't expect to see in my lifetime! The local party across Brighton and Hove must draw the lesson that we should work together in unity and solidarity.

Twelve years ago on this blog - trade unionists must support our Labour Party though it does not support us

12 years ago to the day, I wrote a blog post here in the run-up to the 2010 General election in which, with a more or less heavy heart, I advocated support for Labour under the leadership of Gordon Brown.

After four General Elections, and four Labour leadership elections in the intervening 12 years we seem to be largely back where we started politically, except that, in spite of the fact that we are now more than a decade into Tory government rather than Labour government, we don't seem to be on the brink of ousting an incumbent Government.

The Conservative party, now in government, is deeply committed to attacking the interests of trade union members and working-class people in this country and throughout the world. Their policies and practices plumb new depths of reaction with every passing month.

Our Labour Party, following a brief period under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn when it seemed to be moving in the direction of the progressive policies long advocated by the trade unions, is now very firmly once more the would-be Second 11 for British capitalism, led by someone who makes Gordon Brown look like a charismatic populist.

Whereas under Blair and Brown, the party leadership were generally prepared to tolerate the presence of a small socialist left-wing within the party, as long as they could be sure it had very little influence, the current regime is in the midst of a brutal and absurd witchhunt of socialists intended to ensure that the threat of socialist leadership can never again arise within the UK Labour Party.

Trade unionists faced the same choice on polling day in May 2022 as we did in May 2010. In a small number of cases, would-be socialist alternatives to the Labour Party will stand and receive a derisory number of votes. Serious socialists will cast their vote for Labour against the Tories, now as we did then.

As long as the Labour Party is the party of the trade unions (even if, in practice, this generally means the party of the trade union bureaucracy) then the leadership will never succeed in eradicating the possibility of socialist politics, since this grows from the experience of rank-and-file trade union activism.

Trade unionists are part of a movement which is as large now as it was 12 years ago in spite of the sustained attacks of first the Coalition and then the Tories. We face legal shackles beyond the imagination of the movement I joined in the 1980s, but we are finding ways - and we will find ways - to shake off these chains in the future.

Socialists in the trade unions need to build our movement as a militant, politicised mass movement, the lack of which doomed the Corbyn project to failure. Such a movement would re-create the possibility of a socialist leadership for our party, as well as providing the extra Parliamentary support such a leadership would require. 

Equally, were the right wing of the party to have succeeded in eradicating socialism within the Labour Party (as I do not believe they will) then such a movement would provide a viable basis for creating a new answer to the crisis of representation of the working-class, such as does not exist at present.

This, I suppose, is what comrades in UNISON mean when they say it is "Time for Real Change". There is a lot of work ahead, and I am only sorry that I can't really expect to be part of it for too much longer.

Ten years ago on this blog - exposing today's UNISON hypocrites

10 years ago to the day I blogged here about the failure of our trade union satisfactorily to assess the equality impact of proposed settlement of the public sector pension dispute which had led, five months before, to the largest strike action of my working life.

I was at the time part of a recalcitrant minority fighting a hopeless rearguard action against the forthcoming settlement of those disputes on terms which I, and others, did not think were satisfactory. 

I thought then, and think now, that the failure of our movement to follow up the strike action on 30th of November 2011 with a further action on the same scale empowered the Coalition, and thereafter the Tory government, to continue its assault upon the living standards of our members.

Working together with a number of other comrades I had drafted a series of motions to the 2012 local government conference which were intended to constrain an unsatisfactory settlement of the dispute. These motions were generally unsuccessful, but the motion demanding the publication of an equality impact assessment ahead of any ballot on a proposed settlement was agreed (although, as is quite often the case, the conference decision was honoured rather more in the breach than in the observance).

Since the right-wing minority who are now critical of the new left-wing majority on UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) will - in the run-up to the forthcoming National Delegate Conference - be launching all manner of hypocritical and disingenuous attacks upon the majority of their colleagues, dishonestly alleging a lack of commitment to equality, I think it worth reflecting upon these events of 10 years ago.

During the three decades in which those who are now a minority on our NEC were a pliant majority, doing the bidding of the paid officials who ran the union, UNISON's commitment to equality was never really even skin deep. We can expect further venomous hypocrisy over the coming weeks and months as the forces of reaction try to regain control over our trade union. Don't believe the hype.

Unions must fight racist Government policy

The Tory government’s plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda is, of course, the most appalling racist dog whistle imaginable in the run-up to the May local elections.

It almost certainly isn't intended that this will ever actually happen, it is a device to hoover up racist votes whilst forcing the Labour opposition to choose between outright condemnation (which will please part of our political base but may not appeal to the mythical "white working class") and a feeble position of simply claiming that this racist policy, which has been condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, won't provide value for money.

As with all so-called “immigration and asylum” policies this initiative is also fundamentally dishonest.

The UK economy - and in particular the economy of London - relies upon the availability of a flexible pool of cheap labour provided by foreign workers who lack the documents to prove their rights to work in this country. 

In my years as a rank-and-file union organiser in London, I was, for example, aware of more than one occasion on which attempts to organise the workforce of privatised parking contracts in London boroughs were obstructed because a sizeable proportion of the workforce were working unlawfully with the knowledge of at least some of their management. This made organising that workforce extraordinarily difficult.

Undocumented workers cannot be eliminated from the London labour market, and never will be. No measures can prevent this pool, this "reserve army of labour" from being replenished. The utterly dishonest and hypocritical professed concern at the plight of those who are victims of "people smugglers" is a red herring.

The purpose of racist immigration and asylum policies is both to divide and rule the working-class and to provide a material basis for the super exploitation of the undocumented workforce.

All that having been said, the fact that an incumbent government is formally proposing a policy which in the 1970s would have been at home in the manifesto of the National Front is a remarkable and worrying, not to say frightening, development. 

The labour movement needs to adopt an uncompromising position of opposition to this racist policy, along the lines of the position of PCS. Other trade unions need to follow this lead and then to lead the Labour Party into a stronger position of opposition.

Marching to the beat of a different drum

I've been on very many demonstrations since the late 1970s.

In particular I have marched against war. I marched against war in Iraq in 2003 when we were in a majority and I marched against war in the Falklands in 1982 when we were in a minority.

Unfortunately, I am not now well enough to attend a demonstration. There is however a demonstration taking place on Saturday which I don't think I would attend even if I were fit to do so.

Many trade unionists, including many whom I greatly respect, will be marching in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. They will be opposing the Russian invasion as well as calling for support for Ukrainian trade unions and for admission of Ukrainian refugees from the war into this country.

I agree with all those demands. However, it seems that only the last demand is one that can sensibly be placed upon the government of the United Kingdom, which is the only government likely to be influenced by a march through the streets of London.

It seems to me that those who have organised this demonstration have allowed their agenda to be set by a mass media which has focused upon atrocities committed upon white Europeans in a way in which it simply doesn't when similar atrocities occur elsewhere in the world.

Our trade union movement - unlike our establishment and ruling class - cannot be accused of hypocritically noticing the plight of the Ukrainians whilst having ignored the plight of the Palestinians. I have been on numerous trade union demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, which have had a useful purpose of trying to put pressure on our government to influence its Israeli ally.

However, a Yemeni might well ask to trade unions who have organised Saturday's march where they have been for the last few years of bombardment from the Saudi led coalition.

There have been numerous wars around the world in recent years which do not seem to have aroused the media and to have led to such major mobilisations on our streets.

Socialists ought not to take their politics from watching the television (or the Internet) and deciding who the good guys and bad guys appear to be. When the Ukrainian trade unions are, quite understandably, calling for military aid to Ukraine, simply to march "in solidarity with Ukrainian trade unions" is hardly consistent with a long-term and principled opposition to the United Kingdom's leading role in the global arms trade. The more nuanced approach of the statement from the Time for Real Change group within UNISON is to be preferred.

Socialists and trade unionists ought not to support selling arms to Ukraine any more than to any other country on the planet. Socialists and trade unionists ought to stand against war whether that is popular or whether it is unpopular and a minority opinion at any particular point in time.

Wars do not begin when bad people start picking on good people. Wars are fought between capitalist nations over resources. They can also arise out of the competition between nations or blocs of nations, as the First World War arose when a small spark lit the tinderbox of competing imperialist powers.

There is no contradiction between condemning the appalling, brutal, murderous and unlawful Russian invasion of Ukraine whilst at the same time understanding that there is a background to these events which, without doubt, includes the eastern expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation over the past generation.

To comprehend a wider background, in international relations, to Russian aggression in 2022 is no more to excuse that aggression than an understanding of the role of the punitive terms of the Versailles agreement upon a defeated Germany in 1918 and its contribution to the rise of the Nazis amounts to excusing the Holocaust.

In circumstances in which Western Governments, whilst understandably unwilling to commit to the military defence of Ukraine, are using Putin’s invasion to whip up Russophobia, organising a mass demonstration in the way which is proposed amounts to providing cheerleaders for our own ruling class.

In time of war, as at any time, the task of socialists and trade unionists is to focus on the only war which we have to fight, which is the class war. The priority for trade unions in the United Kingdom should be fighting to defend the living standards of our members.

We should certainly demand access to the United Kingdom for refugees from the war in Ukraine, as we should make the same demand in respect of all refugees, regardless of the colour of their skin, because socialism stands for the interests of all workers across the world regardless of nationality.

What our movement should not do is march to someone else's drumbeat, particularly not when that involves taking sides in a war between different capitalist nations. Workers have no country and our job as socialists is to try to explain this in times when it may be easy and, even more so, in times when it may be very difficult.

We should be marching to the beat of a different drum.