Rob Rooney, delegate from Cornwall Trades Union Council (personal capacity)
No Labour MP was there, thankfully. But Labour’s malign influence was palpable at the South West Trades Union Congress (TUC).
Ines Lang, South West TUC secretary, tried to set the tone reporting on July’s general election. She said: “We now have 23 MPs in the south west.”
Despite the Gaza genocide, the two-child benefit cap, means-testing pensioner Winter Fuel Payment, fatuous “grow the economy” rhetoric, bailing out Thames Water, the Labour Party is still ‘our’ party, it seems!
When I last met another of the TUC officers, Sadie Fulton, she was waxing lyrical about Labour’s Employment Rights Bill. Six months later, Ines clearly held the same high hopes.
She listed the ‘benefits’ outlined by the Labour government. We’re promised “stronger union rights.” More detail is needed, she said. “We’re holding the government’s feet to the fire.”
Ines spoke of union members being on the frontline last August, when the far right mobilised. But, throughout the weekend, there was no recognition that Labour’s anti-working-class policies breed support for the far right.
Motions were proposed and approved from RMT and Aslef transport unions. The wording of these motions betrayed a naive belief in Labour, which still infects part of our movement.
Sian Elliott, TUC director of organising, led a discussion on ‘delivering for workers’. She said we’re at a “pivotal moment”.
My ears pricked up. Were we about to hear a historic break in the union movement’s abusive relationship with the Labour Party?
Sadly, no. The pivotal moment is apparently that, “For the first time, we have a government prepared to work with us on a transformative agenda on workers’ rights.”
Without a trace of irony, Sian spoke about the far right seeking to scapegoat the vulnerable. This was on the day the Labour government’s attacks on sick and disabled people were being heavily trailed.
This was too much for me. I had been hesitant about ruining the love-in with the Labour Party, but felt I had to say something. I stuck up my hand.
I am happy to report that I was beaten to it by someone from the Musicians’ Union. She said she was “troubled” by the constant approving references to this government, and wondered if the TUC had a fallback position for when a break has to be made.
Sian thanked the delegate for a “brilliant question, it’s nice to be challenged, it keeps us on our toes.” She made the astonishing claim that “Labour exists to serve the public, not the other way round”. No government “is ever going to change people’s conditions, that is what we do for ourselves.”
Cornwall TUC’s motion to conference, adopted from the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN), calling on the TUC to recall its conference to discuss the Employment Rights Bill, was ruled out of order.
Labour stopped serving the public decades ago, if it ever did. But sections of the trade union movement are stuck in the past. The working class needs its own new mass party.
