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Tales of penthouse suites, designer clothes and freebie specs have embarrassed Starmer & Co –much to the delight of the Tory press. Health Secretary Wes Streeting says he’s “proud of people who want to contribute, not just their time and volunteering, but their money to our politics. It is a noble pursuit just like giving to charity and we don’t recognise that enough. The alternative is we ask taxpayers to fund our politics. I’d think they’d rather their taxes went into the NHS and our schools or stayed in their own pockets”. Whether Lord Alli, whose generosity stretched for funding £5,000 worth of clothes for Starmer’s wife, really is an altruistic philanthropist remains a matter of opinion but it certainly provided an amusing diversion from the dreary spectacle of Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions to give the working class its own voice within Parliament but the Parliamentary Party leadership has been dominated by the middle class intelligentsia since the days of Ramsay McDonald. Labour has always been a mass party encompassing a very wide political spectrum though its agenda has historically bee largely set by right‑wing social-democratic factions. In the old days left factions were tolerated, though every now and again it would purge those of a Trotskyist persuasion if they strayed beyond the consensus of the senior Labour politicians and union leaders who led the movement. These days anyone who departs from the bourgeois norm can be hounded out.
While Labour Party conference is formally the supreme decision-making body of the party
its decisions have never been binding on the Labour leadership. Hugh Gaitskell, the right-winger who led Labour from 1955 to 1963, bitterly clashed with Conference over unilateral nuclear disarmament. His attempt to dump Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution, which committed Labour to nationalisation of all the means of production, failed though it was eventually carried out during the Blair era.
Starmer talks about “Changed Labour”. He made his keynote speech promising that there is “light at the end of this tunnel” while making it clear that we can expect no change from him on austerity.
Once upon a time the grandees saw the need to allow the rank-and-file some space for genuine debate. Nowadays conference has largely been reduced to a leadership rally with set piece top-table speeches and stage-managed standing ovations from the delegates in the hall.
Sure delegates defied the Starmer leadership when they voted for a motion calling for the party to reverse winter fuel allowance cuts, impose a wealth tax and revise fiscal rules. But it hardly matters as nothing will come of it anyway.
Labour is meaningless unless it reflects the wishes of the millions of its affiliated union members. That’s real democracy. But Labour will never be truly democratic if it’s not controlled by its affiliates. That’s what it was set up for in the first place. And a Labour Party whose policies reflect those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.
by New Worker North West correspondentUnite’s supreme policy making conference, which normally takes place every two years, was delayed by several months because of coronavirus and the pandemic,
But last month the conference for Britain’s second largest union was held at the huge ACC Convention Centre, Kings Dock, Liverpool. Before conference all delegates, observers, guests, the press and media, were required to be self-tested at home for COVID‑19 using postal NHS kits from the National Test and Trace Service.
The simple Covid lateral flow test produces a positive or negative result, which is then self-reported via computer or mobile telephone. Those with positive test results were advised to stay at home.
People with negative test results were not checked at the ACC venue by security however, making a mockery of the whole process.
Unite's Policy Conference kicked off at 1pm on Monday 18th October. It was attended by over 700 Unite delegates and dozens of observers, guests, Unite full-time officials and staff, fringe-events organisers, and the press and media.
It was competently chaired throughout by Tony Woodhouse from the Union's Executive Committee and the new General Secretary, Sharon Graham, served as Secretary to Conference.
In her keynote address, Sharon Graham set out her programme of change to transform the way the union operates. “Unite is going to be in the vanguard that can change what is happening to workers. Their voice must be heard. We have to concentrate on defending jobs, pay and conditions. We will not accept further attacks on workers’ living standards. It’s time we put a stake in the ground on that.”
In her first speech to annual conference since being elected general secretary, the Unite leader warned that workers should not “pay the price for the pandemic” and compared the current economic situation with the 2008 economic collapse.
“The post-Covid crisis is 2008 on steroids. The politicians have failed us during the COVID crisis; they were nowhere to be seen. There is no political saviour on a white horse coming over the hill to save us. We have to organise and fight for ourselves. That’s what the trade unions are for.”
She focused on the many unscrupulous employers who have used the cover of the pandemic to fire-and-rehire workers to force wage cuts and attacks on their conditions. She said: “Employer after employer has used fire-and-rehire to make workers pay for COVID. One in 10 workers has suffered this fate to-date.”
The new general secretary singled out one particular employer to point the finger at – British Airways (BA). She said: “BA’s actions on fire-and-rehire set a chain reaction which emboldened other employers to fire-and-rehire their workers. They became pace-setters for a drive to the bottom on wages and conditions.”
Now it was time to build Unite’s power to change things by ushering in a new era of 'Combine' organisation, “deepening the union’s industrial focus”. She pledged to use the creation of ‘combines’ – “where we bring all our reps together by industry or sector to create collective bargaining at the level of whole industries or sectors”. The new combines would be fit for the 21st Century to tackle multinational employers.
Sharon Graham highlighted Unite’s creation of a home-working agreement for bank workers as an example. This meant that instead of the agreement being put piecemeal to the Big Four high street banks, it should be put forward to all the bank chief executive officers for an industry collective agreement. She said: “The reality is if we don’t strike good agreements, we will pay the price of bad agreements taking hold.”
Finally she spoke about what she termed “worker politics”. Her position on Unite and the Labour Party had been misconstrued by the media during her election campaign.
She said her commitment to “getting back to the workplace” did not mean that Unite was abandoning politics.
“Time to slay this particular dragon,” she said. “The idea that Unite is standing down from the political arena is totally wrong. Rather, we want to build a different politics, not top down but from the shop floor and the fabric of local communities up, in order to drive through the political process in an entirely different way.”
On Wednesday afternoon, outgoing General Secretary Len McCluskey gave a stirring farewell speech to delegates. After a decade at the helm, assisting the merger of several unions including the old TGWU, engineers, electricians, printers, construction workers, banking staff, Amicus, MSF and others, he wished the incoming general secretary all the best for the future.
It was a successful, uplifting, well attended delegate conference at the ACC Centre in Liverpool. There were many fringe stalls and meetings. The Liverpool Centre enjoys modern communications and state of the art technology, the Centre staff being helpful and professional. Disabled access outside the Centre to the entrance was poor, however, and complaints have been made about this to the General Secretary and the Centre management.
Unite is facing the future as a massive, growing and strong union. It is democratically run by its Lay members and its Executive Committee – it is not controlled by its appointed full-time officials.
Unite's education service nationally and regionally is second to none. Workers can obtain time off from work with pay to attend short courses on health and safety, shop stewards organising and specialist trade courses. Unite should however, organise more courses on the workers history of struggle, and the scientific philosophy of the working class: dialectical and historical materialism.
Turn-out in the recent election postal ballot for a new General Secretary was too low. Unite needs to find ways to increase membership voting in such important elections.
Unite is determined to remain membership-led in its campaigns for better wages and conditions, for equality at work, to embrace new technology, for a shorter working week without wage cuts, to rebuff the employers, particularly global companies, and to work constructively with a progressive, socialist-oriented Labour Party without allowing Labour to dominate Unite.
