Firefighters break with Labour
Time For A New Workers’ Party
"OUR CHOICE is whether to stay in the Labour Party,
docile and tame, or leave and fight like tigers for what these class
traitors have denied us…"The future starts here and the future starts
now…"You have the power – you can do it."
With these words, Tony Maguire from the Northern
Ireland Fire Brigades Union (FBU) moved the historic proposal for the
union to disaffiliate from the Labour Party at its conference last week in
Southport.
Ken Smith reports from the FBU conference
The debates on pay and the union’s links to the Labour Party dominated
the conference.
Above: Firefighters in November
2002 on their 2002 – 2003 national strike (Photo Paul Mattsson)
On the link with Labour, the argument centred on whether
the union should continue to affiliate to the Labour Party at a reduced
level while, at the same time, supporting other political organisations, a
position similar to the rail union RMT’s. This was proposed by the union’s
executive.
The alternative was immediate disaffiliation, in a composite motion
proposed by the Northern Ireland and Strathclyde FBU regions.
The composite proposing complete disaffiliation was passed by 35,105 to
14,611.
The debate had added significance after the decision of the
Communication Workers’ Union conference the previous day to immediately
cease funding Labour if the party did not give a commitment in its
election manifesto to keep the postal service as a public enterprise.
Disaffiliation
Moving the motion for disaffiliation, Tony Maguire said: "Our party,
the party that we nurtured through the Thatcher years and the party that
we gave hundreds of millions of pounds to has stabbed us not in the back
but in the heart. Every single FBU branch in Northern Ireland has told us
to put clear blue water between us and the sycophantic, cronyistic
ideologues who call themselves the Labour Party."
Tony, a member of the Socialist Party’s sister organisation in Ireland,
received the only standing ovation of the conference after he had finished
his speech.
Speaking to the socialist after the debate Tony
Maguire said:
"We should be humble in the context of history. This
is only one moment in history. The people who established the Labour Party
must have wrestled with the same birth pangs of creating a new movement as
we are. We shouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume that when workers created
the Labour Party they got it absolutely right. Now the whole issue needs
revisiting."
These decisions by the FBU, CWU and RMT have historic significance and
show a small part of the intense anger of workers at New Labour and the
fact that we are "feeding the hand that bites us" through our trade
unions. Socialist Party members in the FBU, RMT and other unions will be
arguing for the calling of a cross-union conference of elected delegates
representing rank and file members, to discuss how to build a new workers’
party worthy of the name.
