Ian Pattison, Socialist Party national committee
A year ago, the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) warned that Keir Starmer’s Labour government was preparing ‘austerity 2.0’, and lobbied the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for it to lead the fight against this. And, in the last year, Starmer’s Labour has attacked the working class, cutting our pay and public services.
Therefore, this year, the NSSN again rallied and lobbied at the Congress, calling on the trade union leaders – representing 6.5 million workers, a potentially powerful force – to lead the battle against Starmer’s Labour cuts. That starts with calling a massive national demo this autumn against austerity.
Rob Williams, chair of the NSSN, said that, a year ago, Starmer “called for partnership”. But Starmer’s Labour has “dutifully voted against scrapping the two-child benefit cap, or for the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance, or the disability welfare cuts”.
“There are no common interests between workers and their unions and the bosses. This includes when the boss is Starmer and his cutting Labour councils.”
Birmingham Labour council has resorted to brutal strike breaking. “Yet, ending fire and rehire, and scrapping the Tory anti-union laws, were supposed to be the centrepiece of Labour’s Employment Rights Bill. But Birmingham bin workers know full well that fire and rehire is very much alive, and being rolled out by Labour.”
“We’ve waited 14 months for Starmer to deliver on his promise to scrap the 50% strike ballot thresholds, and we’re still waiting. It’s a deliberate step to attempt to undermine national action, especially in the public sector, as Starmer and [Labour chancellor Rachel] Reeves continue to peg back pay after 14 years of Tory wage cuts.”
“Why shouldn’t the trade union movement lobby for what we need? To make the rich pay, not workers. To not just stop more cuts, but to reverse those already made. To give back all that has been taken by the Tories and New Labour from the NHS, education, welfare, and the 40% funding stolen from council budgets in the last 15 years or more.
National demo
“So on behalf of the NSSN, I say: ‘Name the date for a national Saturday TUC demo’… And it you’re looking for a date, let me make a suggestion – Saturday 22 November – four days before Labour’s Budget.”
“Labour austerity has opened up a political vacuum that the populist and far right are rushing to try and fill, with their racist divide and rule that pits worker against worker.”
“But the huge response to the announcement by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana of a new left party, with over 800,000 signing up to give their support, shows that the workers’ movement has an opportunity to put its stamp on events, and give an alternative to workers and working-class communities.
“This is the role that TUC Congress must play.”
Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), said: “The call for a national demo against Starmer’s cuts, we fully back that as a union. I fully back it as a general secretary. And we will be there.”
“I’ll tell you why we back it. It’s not just because of the 14 years of austerity in the fire and rescue service.”
“We expected change a year ago, and we’re not seeing it. We are facing ‘austerity Mark 2’.”
“We are facing [fire] cuts of over £200 million over the next year. That equates to 2,300 firefighters… Whether your members work in a school, in a shop, in a factory, they are at risk… They are at risk because of Starmer’s cuts.”
“I don’t believe that Labour is going to turn these cuts around. We’re going to have to take that fight on ourselves. That’s going to have to be an industrial fight of every fire station, every control room.”
“We need to be on the frontline of this call for a national demo”.
Sarah Woolley, general secretary of bakers’ union BFAWU, agreed: “The call by the NSSN to support the trades council motion… is so important… From the Bakers’ Union, we say clearly that we back the call on this motion.”
“But passing a motion at TUC Congress is one thing… Unless motions are backed up by action, they’re just words on paper.
“We’ve got to have the TUC leading from the front, organising a demonstration against austerity.”
Paula Peters, from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), spoke: “What a shame we have with a Labour government, who brought in ‘austerity 2.0’… The first demand needs to be a huge national demonstration in London against Starmer’s austerity.”
Workers’ rights
Some speakers still held out hope in Starmer’s Labour.
Mick Whelan, is general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef. He is also chair of the organisation of unions that are still affiliated to the Labour Party.
Mick said that he, and the other left-wing unions, argue for the policies we need on bodies inside the Labour Party. “We’re losing those votes 18-10 and 18-12.”
“Don’t believe that taking Angela Rayner out of the game… is not going to allow them to try and water down the Employment Rights Bill further. Don’t believe that going through the House of Lords, that the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the CBI [bosses’ club], the right-wing press, Farage, and all those vested interests, aren’t seeking to change it.”
“We need to get what we’ve got through the Lords next week, in its entirety.”
“We need to keep the firm pressure on Starmer’s neck”, FBU’s Steve Wright put it.
But the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) is excluded from Labour’s Employment Rights Bill. Steve Gillan, POA’s general secretary, said: “My union is in its 31st year of not having a right to strike, that a Conservative government ripped away from us in 1994. The problem is, successive Labour governments haven’t reversed that either.
“Plenty of talk. Plenty of empty promises.”
Labour’s Shabana Mahmood has just been moved from justice secretary to home secretary. Steve added: “I told her to her face, ‘Shame on her’, that they weren’t going to reverse that ban on basic fundamental human rights.”
The POA has motion 17 on the agenda, to get the TUC to back its fight for full union rights.
The Socialist Party and NSSN backed the policy passed at last year’s TUC, to call a special Congress if Starmer’s Labour didn’t deliver its promised workers’ rights within the first 100 days of the government.
Ian Lawrence, Napo probation union general secretary, spoke when we marched outside. He said that Congress needs “to let this Labour government know that we intend it to stand by its promises”. Napo has just voted 90% to strike on a 45% turnout. But its members are not legally allowed to strike on that turnout, because the Tory “legacy laws are still there. Despite the promises to repeal them. I say: ‘Get on with it!’”
Labour has not delivered workers’ rights. Labour has not scrapped any Tory anti-union law, including the 50% turnout threshold.
But a special Congress has not been convened. The Bakers’ Union BFAWU has motion 18 on the agenda at this year’s Congress to make this happen.
New party
The arguments made by some that we should stay in Labour to try and persuade the government to change, were not persuasive to the vast majority of people that spoke. For example, Matt Webb, president of the local trade union council, welcomed us to Brighton. He also opened the NSSN rally last year. He compared his 2024 speech of “cautious optimism” after the election of a Labour government to now.
Many of the speakers said that now they wanted to build something new. The bakers’ union backs the call for a new party, and has said the trade unions should be at the heart of it.
Sarah Woolley said: “Austerity didn’t end with the Tories being voted out… The real problem is the economic system that puts people before profit.”
The bakers’ union motion 18 rightly called on the TUC to “work with the Socialist Campaign Group, Independent Alliance and suspended Labour MPs”. But this important demand was composited out. Union activists will ask, was this done because some unions want to cover for Labour, and maintain the link with Starmer’s party at all costs?
Deji Olayanka, a delegate from the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to Congress, spoke in a personal capacity. He criticised the cut to the bakers’ union motion.
Deji said: “We need to campaign in this new party for a democratic federal structure, that gives unions and union branches a voice, so that we can get the political changes that we need.”
Len Hockey from Unite Barts NHS in east London brought seven members to the NSSN lobby from his union branch. Len and his fellow workers organised a successful strike to go from being privatised workers to back directly employed by the NHS.
He said that his members didn’t do that just to face Labour pay cuts, austerity, and privatisation.
Len said: “I was proud” to attend this year’s Unite conference “where my union took the momentous decision to suspend the Birmingham Labour councillors… for attacking and reducing our members’ wages. And Angela Rayner was suspended, because of her role”.
Len explained how Unite has decided to review its relationship with Labour, with “all options to be on the table”, including “a new workers’ party”. But none of this can be taken for granted.
Len also said: “It was a very important decision, one I had to defend at the [Unite] regional health sector in London recently, when [pro-Labour] forces in my union were seeking to block that policy motion being carried forward.”
Dave Bartlett, Cardiff Trades Union Council secretary, helped get the motion for a national demo on the TUC Congress agenda. He talked about another initiative. Nine Welsh union branches and trades councils – backed by the bakers’ union representing workers across the United Kingdom – are organising a conference “on the crisis of political representation”.
Ali Haydor, GMB union lead rep for private hire drivers, spoke in a personal capacity to give voice to workers’ anger at Labour.
“We have a huge amount of workers in the gig economy. Employment Rights Bill doesn’t even mention it. Why? What happened to the £15 minimum hourly wage? TUC policy! Why aren’t the TUC leader and unions pushing on [Labour]? Why are we backing them?”
Far right and racism
Sarah Woolley made the point that, unless we organise a working-class fightback on the ground, led by the trade unions, then the far right will fill the vacuum with more protests.
Declan Clune, secretary of the trades council in Southampton, explained: “Something that has really impacted us in our city is the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and racism… So we in the trades council have been active, mobilising against that”.
“We’ve trained and organised stewards for marches… Southampton Police have been not only ineffective, but actually facilitated the [anti-migrant] protesters.”
Stewards “have been effective”. 400 people on a Gaza march got the attention of 40-50 racist protesters. “We held the march, despite horrendous intimidation… but we were only able to do that because the role the trades council played in getting those stewards”.
“We’re organising our own march through the same area of the city [as the racist protests]. But our demands will be about ‘jobs and homes, not racism’… The TUC policy of ‘jobs and homes, not racism’ was passed six or seven years ago… I think trade unions have a massive role to play in this work.”
Paul Kershaw, Unite the Union housing chair, described the effects of poor quality of housing and mould, including in Notting Hill Genesis housing where residents have protested following the death of a baby living in a mouldy home. Paul said: “It’s a disgrace that the far right can use housing as an issue”. We need the workers’ movement “to put forward working-class policies, for rent control, for decent living conditions, and for a mass programme of council housing”.
Sofia Pandolfi Da Silveira, college student and member of Socialist Students, invited us to help build the student walkouts when Donald Trump visits the UK on 17 September.
Kai, Truth About Zane campaign, has spoken to the NSSN before. His seven-year-old son tragically died in 2014 from floodwater in his home from a contaminated landfill. “Our great Fire Brigades Union… will take motion 50” on this issue to TUC Congress.
After rallying inside, over 100 of us marched along the seafront to right outside the Congress venue, to take our message direct to the union delegates. Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), also spoke when we arrived.
“It cannot be right, two years into a genocide in Gaza, that we defend increases in [defence] spending, when we know what it’s used for… We’re happy to see immediate increases in our expenditure, if it’s on our education, it’s on our railways, it’s on our infrastructure, it’s on the NHS”.
Heroic bin workers strike
The room was electric for the bin workers. Both received massive standing ovations.
Danny Taylor, Birmingham bin worker, said: “I’m a proud striking worker”.
“Shockingly, these attacks are coming from a Labour council… Now they’ve gone even further”, with workers losing “up to £8,000 a year… If they get away with it here, councils across the country will copy”.
Commissioners “blocked our deal months ago… acting under Angela Rayner”. She “didn’t visit a single picket line. Instead… she congratulated the scab workforce on a ‘job well done’.”
Birmingham Labour council “doesn’t want us back. They’ve built a service, propped up by agency labour. Workers with no rights, no security, no power to fight back.
“Birmingham City Council boasts about its successful trial of agency-run collection”. It “wasn’t just unofficial and unsafe, it cost more money.”
The Labour council “has thrown everything at us – section 14 orders, court injunctions, police intimidation… private security thuggery, smears in the press, illegal deductions of holiday pay.”
But we “have not been broken. We’ve just reballotted the members with a 72% turnout, with a 99.5% ‘yes’ to continue the action.
“That’s not just a mandate. That’s a roar of defiance.”
Rob Williams said: “On Saturday 20 September, if you’re doing something, cancel it. Come to Birmingham. Come on the demonstration.”
Joel Mayfield, Sheffield bin worker, striking for over a year for union recognition at Veolia, said that they’d appealed to Sheffield Labour-led council for help. “But in the same way they contract out the service, they contracted out the blame. ‘Not our problem’”.
“Real activism, the real trade union movement… that’s where you learn real knowledge about the trade union movement, class struggle.
“It doesn’t just come from books. It comes from lived, breathed experiences, conversations with strikers on picket lines”.
“A similar display of inter-union solidarity is needed, in the form of a national demo against Starmer’s government, and his planned cuts. And it’s up to the TUC to back such a demo.
“We want rights for workers from day one, not with a qualifying period. We want to abolish the punitive thresholds and draconian anti-strike laws. And we call for an end to all zero-hour contracts, not just exploitative ones.”
