The Case for a New Mass Workers' Party [Back]
4. Breaking the link
ONE OF THE reasons why Blair hasn’t yet totally broken the link between New Labour and the unions is that the union leaders can still be relied upon to do his bidding and keep workers in check.
Another reason is that although he has successfully wooed rich big business backers he still needs the unions’ money. In 1999 the unions coughed up almost £6 million to finance the party. For the moment, New Labour are happy to continue with a relationship where the unions bankroll the party but have no say or control over the policies which are actually carried out.
But within the unions themselves unrest is growing. In the year 2000, the Socialist Party took the initiative in launching a cross-union campaign for a new workers’ party. Its founding sponsors included ten national executive members from six major unions.
The campaign calls on unions to do everything they can to promote and encourage the idea of a new workers’ party. Inevitably, at this stage, before the onset of major industrial battles, much of the campaign will consist of convincing workers that a new party is needed. But there are also concrete things which can be done now.
One of the main demands of the campaign is for the unions’ political funds which support New Labour, to be freed up so that they can be used to back candidates and parties whose policies defend members interests.
This is gaining increasing support. It formed a central part of the election manifesto of Socialist Party member Roger Bannister, when he stood in 2000 as the Left’s candidate for general secretary of UNISON (the public sector union). More than 71,000 members voted for Roger (33% of the vote), many inspired by the demand that not a penny should be given to New Labour councillors, MPs or candidates who attack UNISON members’ terms and conditions.
In 2000, with an election approaching, Blair wanted to increase union donations from £6 million to £8 million but some workers said ‘enough is enough’. Some have chosen to individually opt out of paying the political levy, which in most unions is used to finance New Labour.
Derrick Hunt, for example, worked as a gardener for Lewisham council. Then his job was privatised under New Labour’s ‘best value’ legislation and handed over to private contractors, Glendale. Derrick battled for a year to cancel the levy because he felt that ‘best value’ was undermining union agreements.
"I have always been a Labour Party supporter", he explained, "but it is as if they take us for granted, and that whatever they do to the workforce they will still be able to collect their dues". (South London Press, 7th November 2000)
On the London Underground many workers have opted out of the political levy in protest at Labour’s plans to privatise the Tube.
Workers have also collectively been making a stand. At the spring 2000 conference of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), delegates voted against increasing their political levy by £200,000. So angry were workers at the proposed back-door privatisation of the Post Office, that they passed a resolution threatening to withdraw ‘financial and moral support’ from New Labour if they were to go ahead with their plans.
Bectu, the broadcasting and media union, is not known for its militancy. But at its conference in the same year, one third of delegates voted to review the union’s relationship with New Labour.
Ken Livingstone’s decision to stand as an independent candidate against New Labour for London mayor opened up a new situation and galvanised support from many sections of workers. His challenge showed that it is possible to break with New Labour and win, and further weakened Labour’s grip on the unions.
Trade unionists were furious about the way that he was stitched up in the selection process (80% of trade union members who were balloted, voted for Livingstone). The London construction branch of the engineering union, (AEEU) called on its 28,000 members not to pay their political levy in protest. London railworkers (RMT) and firefighters (FBU) openly declared their support for Livingstone.
Since the 2001 general election, events have developed quite rapidly. New Labour’s plan to push further ahead with privatisation of public services has provoked a backlash in the public sector unions. At its conference in May 2001, the FBU became the first national union to vote to review its links with Labour. The resolution, which was moved by a Socialist Party member, called for the union’s political fund to be used to support "candidates and organisations whose policies are supportive of the policies and principles of this union".
This opens the way for the union to back candidates standing against New Labour. But a battle will now have to be waged within the FBU to ensure that the resolution is implemented in practice. In 1996 delegates voted to review the link with Labour but that decision was then overturned at a later conference.
At the 1899 conference of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) it was a delegate from the railworkers union who moved the original resolution which led to the formation of the Labour Party. One hundred years later, railworkers in the RMT launched a ‘Campaign for an Independent Political Fund’.
They want the right to control their own political fund so that the money can be used to back candidates who, unlike New Labour, oppose privatisation and support the re-nationalisation of the railways. In 2001, RMT delegates voted at their AGM for a resolution which threatened to withdraw political and financial support from New Labour if it continues with its ‘disastrous’ transport policies.
Perhaps the most significant vote was at the conference of UNISON, the biggest union in the country. Socialist Party member Glenn Kelly successfully moved motion 131 calling on the National Executive to review the union’s financial links with New Labour.
Reflecting the anger of delegates who are facing privatisation in the health service, education local authorities and other areas, the resolution was passed on a card vote with a 92,000 majority. Socialist Party members will be campaigning for a discussion at every level of the union on this issue and to keep up the pressure on the national leadership of UNISON to carry out their members wishes.
Disaffiliation
IT’S CLEAR THAT the arrow is pointing firmly in the direction of workers breaking with New Labour.
But the links won’t be severed in one clean break. Some older workers and union activists are reluctant to make the break with New Labour. They are angry about Labour’s anti-working class policies but hang on, fingers crossed, hoping that somehow things will change.
While they might support ‘freeing up’ the political funds, at this stage they are not prepared to back disaffiliation. But in the future, as more sections of workers come under attack and move into struggle, the pressure to break the link will grow.
Most of the trade union leaders of course will do everything in their power to resist moves towards disaffiliation. They prefer to cling on to a relationship which gives the illusion that they have some influence and can be used to hold workers back from taking action.
New Labour, however, have threatened to change its rules so that it can disaffiliate any union which supports alternative candidates standing against them in elections. If implemented this would pose quite starkly the question of disaffiliation.
But it’s important that disaffiliation is linked clearly with the idea of workers building their own independent party. It is possible that under enormous pressure from below some union leaders could be forced to reluctantly accept disaffiliation but at the same time argue implacably against a new workers’ party. Some union leaders have already raised the idea of giving money to the Liberal Democrats instead of New Labour. But of course the Liberal Democrats are yet another pro-market capitalist party.
The union leaders could also argue in favour of ‘neutral’ or ‘apolitical’ unions. This would not be in workers’ interests. In the USA, for example, the unions are not and never have been affiliated to the Democratic Party. Yet still the unions contribute millions of dollars to Democrat coffers.
In the 2000 presidential elections, the leader of the US union federation the AFL/CIO, pledged $48 million in resources for Al Gore’s Democrat challenge. Unions send delegates to conventions and leaders slavishly support the Democrats in elections despite their open pro-corporate agenda. In other words, in practice, contrary to what those such as the SWP say – in Chris Harman’s words, that "the base of Blair’s party still remains different to that of Clinton’s and Gore’s" – the relationship is fundamentally no different from the one that exists between the unions and New Labour today.
Standing candidates
IN THE FUTURE more and more trade unions at a local, district and regional level will be prepared to openly support alternative candidates.
This could well bring them into conflict with the union bureaucracy. What would happen then would depend on the balance of forces in the union and the determination of workers themselves. In the run-up to the 2000 London elections, for example, the then general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Ken Cameron, forced the London regional council of the FBU to take back the money it had given to support Livingstone’s mayoral campaign.
In the Communications Workers Union (CWU) however, the 2000 conference voted to censure the national treasurer for his attack on the north London branch, which had backed Livingstone and London Socialist Alliance (LSA) candidates standing for the Greater London Assembly.
Many trade unionists will want to go even further and stand their own candidates in elections. Socialists should encourage and support that. In the elections to the Greater London Assembly (GLA), underground workers in the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation (CATP) presented their own list of candidates and had the backing of the London Underground regional council of the RMT.
A year earlier in Tameside, six careworkers challenged New Labour in the council elections under the banner ‘Defend Public Services’. They explained why in their strike journal:
"The Labour council had already privatised the care homes and sacked us because we refused to accept a wage cut, and it was already setting in motion the privatisation, in one way or another, of housing, leisure services and education.
"How could we vote for Labour Party candidates? But that raised another question. What then should workers vote for? If we were prepared to stay out on strike for a year to fight for our principles, surely those principles had to be taken into the election".
In many recent disputes involving public sector or former public sector workers, strikers have asked themselves similar questions. Hackney council workers, for example, stood a candidate in a local by-election in June 2001, as an extension of their struggle against the council’s cuts and privatisation programme. Even John Edmonds, leader of the general workers GMB union, has raised the idea of standing ‘pro-public service’ union candidates against New Labour.
"Tony Blair has said he has a mandate from the public for his privatisation plans", he told The Daily Mirror (2nd July, 2001). "Perhaps we should put that to the test at local elections".
Edmonds raised this in attempt to put pressure on the Labour Party leadership in the run up to its 2001 conference. He has no intention of actually carrying out his threat.
But he has been forced to reflect the anger of rank and file GMB members against privatisation and his words will give them confidence to stand their own candidates in the future. As workers move into struggle on a much bigger scale in the future, this process will accelerate.
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The Case for a New Mass Workers' Party
5. Towards a new workers’ party
THERE ARE MANY ways in which a new party could come about and it’s not possible to map out in advance exactly how this might happen.
What will be critical is how new forces will be thrown up in future struggles. But some lessons can also be learned from the opportunities that have already arisen when, given a correct approach by the individuals and other forces involved, a new party could have been created.
Ken Livingstone, for example, could have been a catalyst for a new workers’ party. His independent challenge to New Labour in the 2000 London mayoral election, roused support amongst thousands of working class people, stretching way beyond the capital itself. Despite his rightward political trajectory and claim to represent ‘all classes’, he was generally perceived as a radical oppositionist to the left of New Labour.
If, as the Socialist Party called on him to do, he had used his standing to rally trade unionists, community campaigners, young people etc around the idea of a new working class alternative to New Labour’s big business party, it would have received an enthusiastic response.
Instead, Livingstone told people to stay in the Labour Party and declared that he was not setting up a rival party, but would be campaigning to be brought back into the New Labour fold. His actions potentially deprived thousands of working class people of the opportunity to build a mass party which could fight for their own interests.
A missed opportunity
ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY WAS missed in 1995-96, when the miners’ union leader Arthur Scargill broke with the Labour Party after it scrapped Clause Four (the socialist clause of its constitution), and began to discuss the idea of forming a new socialist party.
While some on the Left argued that it was premature and that he should wait for a Labour government, the Socialist Party (then Militant Labour) welcomed this initiative.
The radical magazine Red Pepper had identified two million voters to the left of New Labour. Many young people were becoming radicalised through single issue, direct action campaigns. Trade unionists were growing disillusioned with New Labour’s move in a capitalist direction.
Scargill had enormous personal authority because of the 1984-85 miners strike and his implacable defence of working class people and socialism. He could have used that authority to help build a party which, potentially, could have developed into a force of tens of thousands of members.
But, as we argued at the time, for a party to realise the potential that existed, it had to be organised on a democratic, federal basis.
"A new generation of workers and youth, especially those involved in extra parliamentary ‘social movements’, will not tolerate restrictive, undemocratic structures", we explained. "Any new party must be inclusive, not exclusive – open to all those who accept its aims and wish to participate. Moreover, genuine democracy means accepting the right of different political trends and organisations, which inevitably exist in the workers’ movement, to participate within a party framework". (Socialism Today No.4, December 1995)
Scargill ignored our warnings and set up the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) as a restrictive party which excluded organisations such as our own and operated a top-down, authoritarian structure, where any dissent was met with disciplinary action and expulsion. An important opportunity to build a new workers’ party was thrown away.
The SLP inevitably degenerated into an insignificant force which has been totally incapable of engaging with new layers of young people and workers. It has become almost exclusively an electoral machine, which resolutely refuses to contemplate even an electoral ‘non-aggression pact’ with other socialist forces.
Lessons from the past
A MASS WORKERS’ party won’t spring into being fully formed. The Labour Party itself arose out of the accumulated experience of decades of working class struggle (see Appendix). These included strikes and a struggle for the eight-hour day, as well as campaigns around social issues such as unemployment, poor housing and free speech. Inevitably there were set-backs and false starts on the way.
Organisations arose at a local and regional level following strikes and struggles which the participants had high hopes for. But many disappeared again once the struggles had ended.
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was one organisation that didn’t disappear. However it didn’t become a mass workers’ party either as many hoped it would. Instead it went on to be one of the founding organisations affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee (LRC - which was later renamed the Labour Party).
We can expect similar developments today. Organisations will be thrown up, some of which will disappear, some of which might or might not go on to form part of a new workers’ party. Whether or not they do will partly depend on the programme and strategy they put forward, and also on how they are organised.
Socialist Alliances
SOCIALIST ALLIANCES ARE a current example of this. Once it became clear that Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party was not going to be organised on an inclusive, democratic basis and would therefore become an obstacle to future developments, the Socialist Party took the initiative in launching genuine, democratic, socialist alliances around the country.
These were mainly alliances of existing socialist organisations, which had quite different ideas about how capitalism could be ended, encapsulated in different political ‘programmes’. Nevertheless we believed that it would be possible to unite together in campaigns and in elections around a common platform, while at the same time maintaining our own individual programmes and political identity.
The Socialist Alliance stood 98 candidates in the 2001 general election in England and Wales. The best results were in Coventry North East, where Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist received just over 7% of the vote, and in St Helens South, where former Labour councillor and regional FBU leader Neil Thompson gained 6.9% standing against Shaun Woodward, the millionaire ex-Tory MP who was effectively imposed on the local Labour Party.
Overall, the Socialist Alliance polled 57,553 votes, an average of 1.7% per seat. Given the unprecedented level of abstentions in the election, which amounted to a ‘voter’s strike’ by millions of working class people, it’s clear that at this stage the Socialist Alliance has not yet been able to establish itself as an authoritative force electorally, capable of channelling the anger that clearly exists against New Labour amongst working class people and youth.
A new workers’ party would obviously include forces much broader than existing socialist groups. In the 19th century socialists played an important part in the agitation for an independent workers’ party and in its formation. But the Labour Party was much more than a ‘regroupment’ of socialist organisations. It arose as a broad working class federation, embracing local and national trade unions, trades councils, local Labour representation committees, as well as socialist organisations.
It’s possible that socialist alliances could in the future play a role in the development of a pre-formation of a new workers’ party. But to do so they would need to be able to reach out beyond the initial participating groups to workers and young people moving into struggle. This would include groups of workers like the Tameside carers, the Hackney council workers, and other trade unionists breaking with New Labour. It would also include community campaigns, such as those against cuts in local services.
Privatisation in particular is a burning issue for working class and many middle class people. Recently campaigns have taken place against the privatisation of education services, the selling off of council housing, the private finance initiative (PFI) in the health service, and the partial privatisation of London Underground. Many of these struggles have united service users with workers whose jobs and working conditions are under threat.
Some community campaigns have already stood candidates in elections and won, most spectacularly in Wyre Forest, where a retired hospital consultant polled 28,487 (58%) campaigning against the downgrading of the local hospital in Kidderminster.
In the future, groups of workers and community campaigners, movements of women, Black and Asian people and gays and lesbians, anti-capitalist youth and environmental protesters, will all move into action to fight for their rights and against attacks on previously hard won gains. Many will consider standing their own candidates in elections against New Labour.
Potentially they could be drawn into a broader alliance. But we have to ensure that no obstacles are placed in their way. That is why we have argued for the socialist alliances to have a democratic, federal structure which would take account of the different experiences, ideas and outlook which people moving into struggle will have.
This would mean that organisations and groups could participate in the alliances if they agreed with the general aims and objectives. But groups could also maintain their own separate identity and programme if they wished, including when standing in elections.
By operating on the basis of consensus between groups taking part in the alliances, no organisation would be able to dominate or impose its ideas on any other, even if they were numerically bigger. This is the type of organisation which we have campaigned for in the alliances.
Unfortunately some groups, notably the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), are opposed to a federal approach. They have attempted to impose a top-down, centralised party structure which has alienated many current participants in alliances and, if unopposed, could be a barrier to wider forces becoming involved in the future. Their orientation in the alliances has been more towards individuals leaving New Labour and the small number of left-wingers who still remain, rather than towards fresh layers of workers, community activists and young people moving into action for the first time.
In Hackney, for example, early in 2001 council workers decided to stand a candidate in a local by-election to strengthen and extend their then seven-month long fight against privatisation and attacks on jobs and conditions. Because the council workers shop stewards’ committee wanted to stand under their own banner rather than that of the Socialist Alliance, the Hackney Socialist Alliance, in which the SWP have a majority, voted to stand against them, splitting the vote.
This is in contrast to the approach of the Scottish Socialist Party which stood down in a Scottish parliament by-election in Strathkelvin and Bearsden (held on the same day as the June 2001 Westminster elections), allowing a hospital campaigner to win 7,572 votes, coming second ahead of the Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats and Tories.
We will continue to fight for democratic, federal and inclusive socialist alliances. Only if organised in that way will they be able to play any meaningful role in the development of a new workers’ party in the future.
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