Alec Thraves, Swansea Unite retired members branch (personal capacity)
Swansea Unite retired members branch, probably one of the largest and most active trade union branches in Wales, invited our new Swansea West Labour MP and recently promoted Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, to address our meeting on the performance of the first seven months of the Keir Starmer government.
Around 30 Unite members, ex-shop stewards, conveners and activists, were keen to question the MP, particularly on the government’s decision to end winter fuel payments.
It was a lively meeting, to say the least!
Before being parachuted into the relatively safe Labour Swansea West seat by the Starmerite election machine, Bell was the Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, an “influential economic research charity working to raise living standards of households on low to middle incomes”.
Our Unite retired members reiterated that they were naturally delighted that the Tories got hammered in the general election. But, after seven months of Labour in office, many members questioned why the Starmer government wasn’t confronting the rich and powerful, and instead immediately attacking the poor and weak in society, particularly the young and elderly.
Bell was asked why he had voted against the Tory two-child benefit limit being abolished, considering those families lost around £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017?
It was pointed out and quoted to him from his pre-election book that before being elected he had loudly proclaimed that this “appalling policy… must be abolished”.
Even more contentious for our retired members was the Labour government’s decision to remove the pensioners’ winter fuel payments!
Our members have held protests, campaign stalls, lobbied Parliament (where there was a ‘no show’, and no apology, from the Swansea West MP), and just last week our members held a big protest outside the Labour-led Senedd in Cardiff.
Unite is now taking the Labour government to the High Court for a Judicial Review to overturn this disgraceful decision.
We have spent millions of pounds in affiliation fees over the years and at the general election we spent a further half a million pounds sponsoring 86 Labour candidates. Members think it’s a crazy state of affairs that we are now spending more of our money, taking ‘our party’ to the High Court, especially after our motion to restore the winter fuel payment was passed at Labour Party conference, but then ignored by Starmer.
Bell’s argument, like numerous other Labour MPs, was that he had been obligated by parliamentary tradition and procedure to vote for the government’s first ‘Kings Speech’. It didn’t wash with members!
As one member commented aftewards: “These loyalist, Starmerite Labour MP’s remind me of one of Marx’s quote (not Karl but Groucho) who said: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others!”
Incredibly, Bell urged our branch members not to attack the Labour government in public but to keep their criticisms and opposition internal!
Not much chance of that in Swansea retired members branch, considering 14 members bought a copy of the Socialist during the meeting, looking for a fighting socialist alternative.
