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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Brighton rocks…

...and no more when the TUC is in town. These days the TUC’s annual conference is little more than a talking shop for the union establishments and Brighton was no exception. Every year the assorted full-time officers get together for this annual jamboree to formulate policies that reflect the views of the senior full-timers and the lay officers that lead the factions that run our unions today. In the coming months motions which reflect the views of the bureaucrats will doubtless end up as material for mediocre TUC campaigns and lobbies – those that genuinely reflect the demands of the street on pay, terms and conditions and social justice will be sidelined or ignored.

Though some motions challenged the bourgeois consensus the bureaucracy ensured that nothing was done to embarrass Sir Keir Starmer who turned up to tell delegates that what he called “Changed Labour” would need to make “tough choices” and provide no “special favours” to unions.

Conference as a whole did however take up the fight against racism calling on the movement to do all it can to mobilise on the streets against the far right and delegates unanimously passed an emergency motion on the danger of a wider war in the Middle East and in support of a national day of action for Palestine on 10th October.

Though the days when the TUC was called the “general staff of labour” are long gone it still pompously calls itself the “voice of Britain at work”. In reality it is, of course, the ‘voice of the union bureaucracy at work’ so we shouldn’t be surprised when, at the end of the day, nothing is done...