Oppositions cannot win General Elections in the UK - so can we focus on what the Labour Party can do for working people now please?

Of all the (great deal) of idiocy which has surrounded the avoidable strife of the Labour leadership election (enabling the Conservative Government to get away without having any plan to deal with the disastrous outcome of the Referendum) perhaps the most stupid claims of the right-wing are that Jeremy Corbyn cannot lead Labour to victory in a General Election.

If you look back at the last four changes of Government in the United Kingdom (the only ones which I remember) then you see how true it is that Oppositions do not win General Elections, Governments lose them. (I exclude the change from a Coalition to a Majority Conservative Government in 2015 because that wasn’t really a change of Government).

In 2010 Labour lost power because of the economic crash which had begun two years earlier. In the short run the electorate punished a Government for being in charge when the economy crashed (and in the long run the material basis for the “New Labour” compromise between economic liberalism and social progress had been destroyed).

In 1997 Tony Blair won an election (in which John Smith would also have triumphed) because John Major’s Government never recovered from the economic consequences of sterling crashing out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. This smashed the Conservative’s reputation for economic competency, but also had negative impacts for which the electorate punished the incumbent Government as soon as they had the opportunity.

In 1979 Jim Callaghan lost to Margaret Thatcher not because there was any popular movement in support of the policies with which she was to come to be associated (many of which she did not then yet advocate) but because the voters punished the Government for the winter of discontent, and for the economic malaise of which it was a symptom.

In 1974 Ted Heath lost to Harold Wilson (albeit in two stages) because voters lacked confidence in the ability of the Tories to address the economic and industrial relations problems which had been expressed by the need for a three day week to deal with power shortages.

The most that an Opposition Party aiming to be a Government can hope to do in the run up to a General Election is to prepare and campaign as effectively as possible – but if circumstances on election day do not dictate that sufficient voters feel badly off under the present Government and see no immediate hope of improvement from the status quo then the Government are likely to remain in office.

The most important question confronting the Labour Party is not whether the Party can form a Government in 2020 (which, given the gerrymandering of constituencies and the loss of Scottish support, seems a remote possibility under any Leader). The most important question is whether there is a future for a Party of the Left to represent the interests of working class people, or whether Labour is doomed to decline as other parties of European social democracy are in decline.

With the trade union movement in the doldrums (and strike action at a historic low) the labour movement needs a political wing in order to be part of our fight, right now, to promote the interests of working class people. Once Jeremy Corbyn is elected (again) perhaps comrades in the Labour Party could return their attention to the real world?

As I have observed here before union activists could usefully engage with the Party’s Workplace 2020 consultation in order to try to be heard.

 

Pessimism of the intellect at the TUC

Yesterday I shared exclusively with regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) the meanderings with which I detained the loyal diehards who stayed to the end of this evening’s Labour Representation Committee fringe meeting at the TUC.

I injected a little pessimism of the intellect (or perhaps pessimism of little intellect) with the trite observation that the surge of membership and enthusiasm which we have witnessed in the Labour Party over the past year had passed our major trade unions by.

I think this may put me at odds with the TUC General Secretary who today told Congress that our movement had been under attack by a hostile Government; “But Congress. We beat them. Not on everything. But in the big battles. We beat them back.”

As ever perhaps it is in the use of the first person plural. Because it is true that, in defending check-off in the public sector we defended the financial stability of our unions so if “we” are those whose first interest is in the institutions of our movement (ahead of the interests of our members) then there may be cause to celebrate.

But if mere lay rank and file members are part of that first person plural then what we have seen is the imposition of further restrictions on our right to strike (without incurring legal liability on the very unions we have just saved from penury) which mean that we shall not see national industrial action across any entire sector by any of the three largest unions which together have half the membership of the TUC.

Because we can say that “what remains of this silly, spiteful law won't stop us defending members' jobs. It won't stop us speaking out. And it won't stop us fighting for fair pay.” But it will.

For those of us whose pay is set nationally, whether by collective bargaining or a pay review body, we know that there is no substitute for national industrial action to fight for a fair national pay rise.

We also know that those who control the decision making levers of our trade unions will not countenance the risk of action which could put the union “in legal jeopardy” (indeed regular visitors to UNISON’s National Delegate Conference will know we cannot even discuss the possibility of doing so for fear that the sky will fall on our heads).

Therefore we have to ask ourselves how confident we are of the ability of our unions to mobilise and motivate to the point that we exceed a 50% turnout in a national strike ballot.

And the only honest answer is: “not at all”.

Which takes us back to the question of how to capture the spirit and enthusiasm which has been flowing into the Labour Party and direct some of it into our big trade unions.

TUC surveys the dire state of our movement - or does it?

Before there ever was a Labour Party there were trade unions and – since the 1860s – an annual Trades Union Congress, which has today been opened by this year’s President.

Congress is, for what it’s worth, the Parliament of our movement. It is where our trade unions agree our policies and campaigns for the coming year.   

Congress meets as our movement is not in good health.

Our membership is static – which is clearly a state of affairs which could be worse. However, the “Corbyn surge” which has doubled the membership of the political wing of our movement has passed our industrial wing by.

Indeed, whilst Labour Party elections are a focus of intense interest and concern, major unions have elected General Secretaries with historically low turnouts below 10% (and even below 5%).

Strike action is at an all time low – and that is before the Trade Union Act imposes new restrictions on lawful action.

As a local government worker I am part of the largest single bargaining unit in the economy (the National Joint Council for Local Government Services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

I am part of the largest unit of trade unionists engaged in collective bargaining, represented by the three largest unions in the country. And I am part of a workforce which has declined by 20% since 2010, the remaining members of which earn 20% less in real terms than we then did.

Trade unions are failing to demonstrate our value to our members and potential members and this accounts for the fact that our members are not engaging and our potential members are not joining.

I would like to think that delegates to Congress in Brighton are driven by a recognition of the urgency of the circumstances facing our movement.

I really would.

Third time unlucky?

For the third time this summer I have to ask you, dear reader, to keep to yourself some information concerning disciplinary action being contemplated against your humble blogger.

I won't bore you with the observation that this third and latest indication that I am under disciplinary investigation follows (once more) some correspondence concerning my complaint to the Certification Officer arising from the General Secretary election.

Although it does.

Anyway, once again I have been told to keep this confidential so please do not mention this to anyone!

What should Labour's policies be on workers' rights?

I like the characteristic balance and rigour of Gregor Gall’s assessment of the promises of the rival candidates for the Labour leadership (both Jeremy Corbyn and that other guy they have put up to lose to him) in relation to the workplace.

The observation that neither contender is really building upon the existing, unsatisfactory, arrangements for statutory union recognition rings true, and begs the question of how we should use the opportunity to respond to Labour’s “Workplace 2020” consultation to try to improve upon this state of affairs.

When Corbyn says “We will give people stronger employment rights from day one in a job, end exploitative zero hours contracts and create new sectoral collective bargaining rights, including mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees. We will create new employment and trade union rights to bring security to the workplace and win better pay and conditions for everyone. We will strengthen working people’s representation at work and the ability of trade unions to organise so that working people have a real voice at work” that’s all very good.

However, as Gall points out, the bar is set too high by restricting mandatory collective bargaining to firms with 250 or more employees, a limit which would invite the breaking up of companies into multiple smaller entities. What would mandatory collective bargaining look like anyway? How would it work in a multi-union environment? How would “sectoral collective bargaining rights” apply? (What is a “sector” anyway in the twenty first century?)

I think union activists are the people who need to find answer these questions.

Union mergers and industrial logic.

News this week has included the decision of members of media union, BECTU to merge into the (former) civil service union, Prospect. Among the consequences of this are that BECTU’s affiliation to the Labour Party will end.

BECTU’s annual return to the Certification Officer for last year records a paying membership of a little over 26,000 and assets of £5.5 million (but liabilities of over £7 million the great bulk of which is a pension fund deficit). The membership figure is remarkably steady in annual returns going back to 2003, although the financial liabilities associated with the pension scheme seem to have got worse over the years. The annual return for Prospect records 104,965 members, so it is pretty clear that this is a defensive merger driven by concerns about the long term viability of the smaller organisation.

There is precious little indication of any industrial logic to this merger, but then industrial logic has little to do with the structure of our movement in the twenty first century.

The structure of the UK trade union movement has never been particularly rational from the point of view of organising the working class, with successive layers of unions emerging over time. Craft unions (representing the particular interests of skilled workers with particular “trades”) developed from the mid-nineteenth century (the most noteworthy being the former Amalgamated Engineering Union, now part of UNITE) and were joined by general unions of the semi-skilled and unskilled workers from the 1880s onwards (including the forerunners of the GMB and of the TGWU – now also part of UNITE).

Industrial unionism (the organisation of all workers in a particular industry in one union) is a development associated with the syndicalism of the early twentieth century (and the RMT is the most significant product of that period today, albeit it exists alongside a craft union, ASLEF), but the public sector trade unions that grew with the public sector in the twentieth century also have certain characteristics of industrial unions.

UNISON’s rules maintain that we aspire to be an “industrial union” for all public services, but the reality of organising a fragmented workforce into a union which recruits the majority of new members online is that we are drifting towards being a general union, as both the GMB and UNITE already are.

Those groups of workers who are fortunate enough to have trade unions dedicated to their particular interests (such as teachers and firefighters for example) will not easily be tempted (other than by a financial crisis of their existing organisations) into joining the giant trade unions which increasing dominate our movement numerically, but those giants cannot be disaggregated (and are too large and jealous of each other usefully to be brought together) so we won’t get a rational structure for our trade union movement for the foreseeable future.

BECTU won’t however be the last of the movement’s (relative) minnows to be swallowed by a bigger fish.