The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st May 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st May 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Readers will probably be aware that a General Election to elect 650 members to the House of Commons is underway. This will not affect the 783 existing members of the House of Lords, (their numbers will be boosted later when a large number of Tories get their ill-deserved rewards).
Historically there has always been a close relationship between unions and the Labour Party, this relationship has often been a fraught one, and is often the subject of internal controversy from left and right-wing members.
It has not always been a case of left-wing unions facing right-wing parliamentarians. For many decades right-wing leaders, from both the pits and public schools depended on the trade union bloc vote to defeat left wing constituency motions at Conference.
Of the 48 unions affiliated to the Trades Union Congress only 11 are actually affiliated to the Labour Party at present. These are ASLEF, Community, the Communication Workers Union, the Fire Brigades Union, GMB, the Musicians Union, the National Union of Mineworkers, TSSA, Unison, Unite and USDAW. However, these unions cover more than half the TUC’s claimed 5.5 million members.
There are notable absentees from this list. This includes the three civil service unions: FDA, Prospect, and PCS who have never been affiliated to Labour. If one takes Yes Minister seriously Permanent Secretaries belonging to the mandarins’ union, the FDA do not care too much about the party label of their fleeting ministers one way or another. The need for “impartiality” prevents Prospect from affiliation while similar moves in PCS and its predecessor, CPSA, failed to gain momentum. Any move to do so these days would likely cause more trouble than it would be worth. Trade unions represent workers who vote for all political parties and securing a narrow vote to affiliate to Labour would cause bitter splits and resignations. When PCS voted to end border controls some of its members speedily set up a breakaway “Immigration Service Union” that now claims nearly 4,000 members. None of the educational unions affiliate to Labour for the same reason.
Both the Fire Brigades Union and Unite have had recent internal debates about the merits of affiliating to Labour. The firefighters broke with Labour in 2004 in disgust with Tony Blair but re-joined in 2015 with the accession of Jeremy Corbyn. Last year Unite overwhelmingly voted to maintain affiliation.
Of the three rail unions, RMT is noticeably absent from Labour’s ranks. In 2003 it chose to get itself expelled from the Labour Party when it allowed some Scottish branches to affiliate to the small but then thriving Scottish Socialist Party. When that party exploded in a colourful split RMT did not return to the Labour fold.
Soon afterwards it had an equally unproductive, but duller affiliation to the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), a polite name for a sprig of the old Trotskyist Militant Tendency – the Socialist Party.
This ended with a whimper two years ago when members tired of financing an organisation which repeatedly hailed getting three per cent of the vote in a council election as a glorious triumph. There has been no returning to Starmer’s Labour Party. So far RMT has declared its support for “Jeremy Corbyn because his track record of supporting RMT members, being a friend of our union and having strong traditional Labour values is second to none”. It will also support “a range of Labour and socialist candidates at the next general election”, but the small print about exactly who will come later.
This trajectory demonstrates the futility of unions disaffiliating from Labour. Left-wingers justifiably dissatisfied or downright angry with Labour Party policy have been at the forefront of disaffiliation demands. The results of disaffiliation mean that members’ money is saved, but at the cost of losing whatever little influence the union ever had on party policy.
These moves make Labour even more dependent on big business donors. Sir Keir Starmer was more likely to be relieved about losing troublesome internal opponents rather than their money.
Given that union elections are generally decided by a very low percentage of the membership the political balance of power does not always reflected in the wider membership.
One recent departure from Labour has been the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) which affiliated to Labour Party in 1902. Its 2021 congress saw the union disaffiliate on the grounds that its 119 year relationship with Labour brought little change and that they had been ignored by the party leadership under Starmer.
This has not stopped the union launching its own “Bakers Dozen” manifesto which includes demands for full employment rights from the first day at work, a £15 an hour living wage, a national care service, renationalisation of utilities and the abolition of university tuition fees. They also make the very specific bakers’ demand for a maximum temperature in the workplace. Curiously they do not call for any curbs on unhealthy fast foods which would benefit the health of the working class.
The affiliated unions have a mixed relationship with Labour. USDAW, the shopworkers’ union, is particularly keen on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party saying “the past fourteen years have shown what a Tory Britain looks like: austerity that cruelly targets the most vulnerable people in our communities; relentless attacks on workers’ and trade union rights that creates more insecure work; chaotic economics that caused a deeply damaging cost of living crisis”. True enough. But the Labour Party in which they have such an unconditional faith has explicitly said it is doing next to nothing about union rights.
The union also deplores “the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting that blights our struggling retail industry”. The latter point ties in with Starmer’s claim that his modest reforms would have the approval of “good businesses”.
Local government and NHS union, Unison, is also taking an equally uncritical view of Starmer’s watered down “New Deal for Working People” saying that “Bad employers will no longer be able to outprice good ones by cutting corners and reducing costs by exploiting staff”.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham took a more realistic view of the Labour’s pledges by saying on Saturday that “the again revised New Deal for Working People has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The number of caveats and get outs means it is in danger of becoming a bad bosses’ charter”.
She highlighted the issue of fire and rehire saying it “is abhorrent and must be banned – no ifs no buts. The day after she made these remarks Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves actually defended the practice saying that “we will end fire and rehire, but when a company is facing bankruptcy, and there is no alternative, they will have to consult with their workers, and with their trade unions”.
Even the Financial Times, which revealed the backsliding to keep bosses happy, has mocked Labour’s claim to be “proworker” and “pro-business”. Other aspects which have been watered down are the pledge to enact reforms “100 days of winning power” which has now been amended to “introduce legislation in parliament within 100 days”.
And only restored at the last minute is a pledge to use public procurement to support good work by directing contracts to companies that recognised trade unions, have high environmental standards and were fully tax compliant.
Labour ’s biggest union backer has warned it may divert election funding earmarked for the party, amid claims that Keir Starmer is diluting plans to overhaul workers’ rights.
Earlier Unite warned it would consider cutting election funding for Labour in favour of supporting a grassroots campaign to lobby Labour MPs to adhere to their pledges.
Meanwhile…
…on the strictly parliamentary field, it is still early days. Jeremy Corbyn has announced he will be standing as an Independent in his Islington North constituency and thus been formally expelled from the Labour Party. The fate of his near neighbour, Diane Abbot, suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, is uncertain at the time of writing. A petition for her to have the whip restored has been set up: https:// actionnetwork.org/ petitions/ restore-the-whip-todiane-abbott/
TUSC is presently advertising for candidates, just as one might advertise for a new office boy, and TUSC’s Scottish arm, the Socialist Party of Scotland, has already announced four candidates. Its deadly rival, the Scottish Socialist Party will also be standing, but has yet to say where. But probably it will run, where it can, against its rival.
George Galloway’s latest platform, the Workers Party of Britain is putting up numerous candidates up and down the country. But with the hasty announcement of the election it will not be contesting every seat in the country as planned. It is also supporting a few other independents such as Jeremy Corbyn, Claudia Webbe in Leicester, and Andrew Feinstein, the former South African MP who is taking on Sir Keir Starmer in London. The WPB is also supporting some Liverpool exLabour independents amongst others.
Workers’ Party candidates are a very mixed bag, and they include defecting Labour councillors and various Muslim activists. Galloway will be fighting to hold the Rochdale seat he won from Labour in February but few of the other candidates are recognisable names beyond their parish pumps. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador who made a sudden switch from Alex Salmond’s Alba Party to get the Galloway seal of approval is one who stands out while former Labour MP Chris Williamson, is another hoping to make a comeback in Derby.
The Communist Party of Britain has promised us it will be fielding the “highest number of candidates in forty years”, an odd claim for an organisation only 36 years old. So far 14 candidates have been chosen including one for the great proletarian stronghold of South-West Norfolk presently represented by former PM Liz Truss.
The Socialist Equality Party, a fragment of the Workers Revolutionary Party, and perhaps the maddest Trotskyist group around, is also joining in the electoral fun along with Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. How many candidates from the Workers International Militant Party and the Communist Revolutionary Action Party will be standing will become clearer soon.
On the workers’ front…
…there is still plenty of industrial action going on. One of these involves the University College Union (UCU) in a bitter dispute including charges of racism and which saw workers take strike action last week following the breakdown of talks at the ACAS conciliation service.
The interesting thing is that in this dispute UCU are the bad guy employer and the good guy workers are the 182 members of Unite who voted by 78 per cent on a 79 per cent turnout for action.
Unite regional officer Rose Keeping said: “The UCU’s undermining of existing industrial recognition agreements, failure to agree key working principles and heavy-handed use of disciplinary procedures have left our members with little choice but to take strike action”.
The educational news website FE Week reports that in March the Unite Black Members’ group claimed that Black staff are disproportionately targeted for punitive action under internal procedures with 45 per cent of all UCU cases handled by Unite having an element of race discrimination.
A Unite spokesperson said that “Unite members have today said enough is enough. We are resolute in our demands for an anti-racist workplace, for UCU as an employer to honour its collective agreements with us and, for an independent investigation into how the organisation is run”.
Another grouse by Unite is that UCU is more concerned about increasing the salaries of its senior staff. Just one example of this is the £18,000 pay rise for recently re-elected general secretary Jo Grady. Apparently she deserved this as she had an expensive libel suit to settle. At the same time Unite says UCU has breached its sole recognition agreement and is dealing with a staff union.
UCU responded by saying: “UCU is proud to offer its staff some of the best pay and conditions in the movement – our staff work incredibly hard, and their work is rightly valued and rewarded highly”. It added that “we recognise that there are areas where we can improve” which can mean almost anything.
A new Robin Hood versus the Sheriff of Nottingham battle is taking place in the form of a dispute involving Medirest, a private contractor in Nottinghamshire’s Sherwood Forest Hospital Trust, and the GMB.
Almost three hundred porters, cleaners, security staff, catering workers and reception teams are walking out on a 48 hour strike from Thursday to Saturday mornings at the King’s Mill, Mansfield Community and Newark Community Hospitals. Strikers are angry at their bosses who refuse to keep terms and conditions in line with workers directly employed by the NHS.
GMB Organiser, Cameron Mitchell, said “private contractors keep our NHS running; it is that simple. They don’t get weekend enhancements, they don’t get fair parental rights or sick pay and they are still waiting for the Covid recovery bonus paid to NHS staff”. In particular, “On a Sunday, Medirest workers are paid almost £10 an hour less than colleagues doing the same work on the NHS payroll”.
A similar battle is ongoing at the Department of Education in London where cleaners belonging to the small United Voices of Workers Street union have voted unanimously for strike action on the 11th and 12th June.
Once again they are outsourced, largely migrant workers, this time employed by ISS UK Limited, who are refusing to negotiate on the demands for the London Living Wage of £13.15 per hour backdated to when it was announced in October 2023.
One of the workers, Gloria Mancera, a cleaner with 18 years at the department said her job brought “no sick pay, too much work, no proper holiday cover. We feel we are treated with disdain, we are fed up and stressed but united in our resolve”.
Another said “they are supposed to give us the London Living Wage, but they keep on postponing, postponing and it’s affecting us because we have to pay bills. The gas people are chasing us, electricity, water and everything. So in fact we are very desperate.”
Despite working in the DfE’s buildings, the cleaners get worse annual leave and sick pay entitlement than the civil service workers they clean-up after. That is of course the whole purpose of outsourcing. The cleaners deserve equality of pay, terms and conditions, and treatment. It is totally unacceptable for a Government department to being run by a two-tier workforce in this day and age.