by John Spellar
John Healy has produced an excellent article on the unpleasant Tory group launching an attack on trade union rights and their ability to represent their members. Also this week, Jim Sheridan, chair of the Unite group, rightly expressed his concern at what he sees as “some within the party constantly looking for ways to break the link”. So the trade union movement and its links with the Labour party are once again under serious attack. It’s déjà vu all over again.
My only difference with Jim’s analysis is that there are also those on the ultra left who are looking at ways of weakening the link, and they always have. Both they and the latter day Jenkinsites have a very weak grasp of the realities of progressive politics, and not only in Britain. The Jenkins heresy always lamented the breach between Labour and the Liberal Democrats at the beginning of the last century. He harkened back to what he saw as a “progressive century” in the nineteenth century. Actually looking at the years in government of the two parties that century, and even regarding Palmerston as a progressive, he was wrong, but the most important error in his analysis is that it implied that the creation of the Labour party as a sovereign party, was a critical mistake.
On the other side, the ultra left, excepting their entryist phases, have always regarded the Labour party and the trade union bureaucracies as obstacles to their Leninist fantasies. The reality for working people today is that under a major onslaught from an economic tsunami and a vindictive and incompetent government, it is now more than ever that they need effective unions at the workplace, strong union campaigning in national issues and a Labour party in, or preparing for, government; and they very much need them working together.
The reality is that in every country with a successful Labour, Social Democratic or even Democrat Party is that there are strong longstanding links with the unions. They are founded on our shared history, values and interests.
There may be nuances in the detailed constitutional arrangements, but they are far less relevant than the community of Labour. So it is right for us to make clear the indissoluble relationship between us. After all, the clue is in our name. So let’s have done with the delusions of both these groups and reaffirm our determination to “keep the link”.
John Spellar is Labour MP for Warley and a shadow foreign office minister.
Tags: John Spellar, keep the link, trade unions
Indisolvable maybe, but needs to be revised, for the C21. The Party as evolved, and is its own man/woman.
John Healy has produced an excellent article on the unpleasant Tory group launching an attack on trade union rights and their ability to represent their members.
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There is no attack.
It’s just that you have to fund it yourself.
If you want to pay someone not to teach, you can. You can’t expect other people to fund your lobbying.
The reality is that in every country with a successful Labour, Social Democratic or even Democrat Party is that there are strong longstanding links with the unions. They are founded on our shared history, values and interests.
Fine. By all means have them. And if you are successful, YOU pay for them.
As a TAXPAYER, I object to subsidising and paying for ANY links with the Unions..- due to the inevitable political links..
Its a pointless discussion, you cant break the link because you need The Unions money, your stuck with it.
In what parallel universe are an unpleasant Tory group launching an attack on trades union rights and their ability to represent their members?
Nobody (repeat NOBODY) is trying to stop unions from representing their members.
What this group is trying to stop is the taxpayer picking up the bill. Why the bloody hell shouldn’t the unions use the money they receive in subs to pay for the staff they need to represent the members who are paying these subs? Since these same unions are then providing funds to the Labour party, the net effect is the taxpayer subsiding the Labour party in a way that is not available to other parties.
It is totally and utterly irrelevant whether these taxpayer-funded union reps do a good or bad, useful or useless job. The issue is who pays – is it reasonable that unions use the taxpayer to fund their activities so that they can shovel their subs to a political party? Hell, no!
Name calling the Tory “reform” of Trade Union Group by calling them unpleasant, is a distraction. No more I think however, than the whole ethos of the thinking behind this. It is simply really, an crude attack on Trade Unions dressed up as “saving tax payers money”. It misrepresents the situation by distorting the “research” done by the Tory “Front” organisations the Tax Payers Alliance and the Countryside Alliance and, no doubt deliberately, misrepresents and confuses union subs with donations to the Labour Party. For the benefit of the Tory Trolls who have responded to this article, donations to the Labour Party come from the completely separate Political Fund. The political fund could no more be used to support workplace reps as union subscriptions the Labour Party Also not all unions in the public sector are affiliated to the Labour party. Of the 19 or so Trade Unions in the NHS for instance, four are affiliated to the Labour Party. They might be the largest four but many TU reps undertaking this “tax payer funded” (not) activity are members of these non LP affiliated organisations who donate nothing at all to the Labour Party.
As for the faux protests about collecting union subs through payroll as being some sort of cost to the employer. In my experience, as a Trade Union branch treasurer for many years, union subs collected by salary check off are usually remitted three months in arrears to the union. Thus, far from being a “cost to taxpayers” they are more an interest free “loan” to the employer from union subs!. I don’t say that this practice is universal of course but to my knowledge, it is common enough. Anyway salary check off arrangements exist for other things such as Gift Aid. If the protests of these people are to be taken to it’s logical conclusion should they not be demanding that charities re-imburse the taxpayer for the costs of collecting their donations?.
This whole campaign is based on deliberate misnomer and very bad research (I saw the FOI request from the TPA – very poor and certainly not good enough to produce the “data” they claim). The voting down of the 10 minute bill a couple of weeks ago was richly deserved. It was just typical Tory political spite. Grow up!.