Ronnie Job
“If it wasn’t for the trades councils there wouldn’t be any debate here.” This was one delegate’s comment to me while I was selling the Socialist paper on the last day of Wales TUC.
The majority of the Wales TUC leadership wants to work in partnership with the Welsh Labour government. Time and again we were told we have to accept cuts and be realistic.
The Socialist Party demands a fight against all cuts regardless of who is implementing them. We pointed out that Labour leads eleven of the 22 local authorities in Wales and the Welsh government. If they had the political will, Welsh Labour has a position to be a powerful force against Con-Dem austerity. But not a single Welsh Labour council has refused to make Con-Dem cuts. For that matter, not a single Welsh Labour councillor has refused to make Con-Dem cuts.
As well as providing the main political opposition, Socialist Party members enriched debates including those on social housing, bedroom tax, zero-hour contracts and moved a resolution, unanimously carried, criticising the Welsh government for subsidising poor working conditions at Amazon, demanding union recognition be made a condition of Welsh government subsidies and calling for a drive to unionise.
If it wasn’t for Socialist Party members, pretty much a single political viewpoint would have been heard at conference. This year’s was the last as an annual conference. From now on the Wales TUC will meet for a full conference only every two years, a move we opposed as reducing democracy and hindering the potential for trade unionists to fight cuts. We need to find other ways next year to get the ideas of socialism and fighting cuts, to trade unionists in Wales and a number of delegates suggested convening a Welsh Shop Stewards Network in order to bring together the most militant sections of the Welsh trade union movement.
