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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

TUC in Brighton

by New Worker correspondent

No surprises at the TUC’s anual congress in Brighton this month. The TUC that communists of yesteryear dubbed the “general staff of the labour movement” still calls itself the “voice of Britain at work”. And at Brighton, “Unity Works” was the banal slogan adopted by Congress House for the event. They would hardly proclaim “Disunity Works” or “Unity Doesn’t Work”…

The 158th Congress was not what it used to be. Labour grandees once attended the entire event. Now they just pop into the hall to deliver their own speech. Back in the 1970s the TUC’s annual conference was a battle ground for the right and left with in the labour movement. Then the union movement was dominated by the blue-collar unions in mining, engineering, manufacturing, transport and trade. Most of that has now gone. The centre of gravity has shifted to the white-collar union giants who dominate a TUC whose overall membership is less than half the 13.2 million it had in 1979.

The members represented in the 47 unions in the TUC today range from the paltry 211 in the National Union of Mineworkers and 310 in the Association of Flight Attendants to the two dinosaurs that have the last word on everything in TUC-land – the Unison colossus with 1.4 million and mighty Unite close behind with over 1.2 million. The next largest are the National Education Union with 501,728 members, GMB with 496,614 and USDAW with 672,477, meaning the largest five account for 3,787,054 members or 72 per cent of the block votes. This makes the outcome of debates somewhat predictable and leads to the suggestion that most things are sorted out at the general secretaries’ dinner.

In light of the greatly reduced numbers, the Congress attracts little media interest. Once upon a time hordes of the now almost extinct breed of labour correspondents arrived to fill broadsheets, tabloids and TV screens alike. But by 2011, BBC journalist John Mair could note that “in the past, there were enough labour correspondents to mount a cricket team to play the union barons before the Trades Union Congress started each year. Today, they could not umpire that match.”

On the Monday after the Congress, YouTube had six official videos of the Congress. These had between 295 and 1,300 views.

Buried in the Annual Report was another indication of the decline of the TUC. For the last two years it has been trying to flog off its custom-built HQ just along from the British Museum. After a false start it appears that the sale is going ahead, but to whom we do not know.

On the whole the TUC does not like controversy and the washing of dirty laundry in public. Behind the scenes any disagreeable motions can be composited to become virtually meaningless. If something unacceptable to the main general secretaries gets through it can be safely ignored. This year a University and College Union (UCU) motion successfully called for “Congress’s support for the Wages Not Weapons campaign, prioritising investment in workers and public services”. This will come to nothing. The industrial unions – Unite, GMB and Prospect are all keen on increased arms spending, and in any case the movers were careful not to argue they were overturning a motion from an earlier year that committed the TUC to more guns than butter.

Much more common were those pious resolutions that sounded like an Anglican vicar declaring that he was against sin. Opposing motions in favour of more music education in school, “investing in early years: giving our children the best start in life” and “supporting effective management in the NHS” would be rather embarrassing.

Supporting increased public service pay and calling for in sourcing across the public sector do not require great powers of eloquence to secure support at the TUC. The Congress wanted to “Own Our Trains” and have “A GBR that works for all” but wisely kept clear of the long-running dispute about driver-only trains on which RMT and ASLEF have dramatically different views.

There was one major non event this year – the largest teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), did not get expelled for poaching – anathema to the TUC under the Bridlington agreement that goes back to 1939. This was on the cards because the NEU was facing disciplinary action for recruiting school support staff to the anger of GMB, Unison and Unite who have traditionally organised, or attempted to organise, janitors, classroom assistants and dinner ladies. NEU recently began recruiting those not in the three other unions and was planning to ballot these new recruits on strike action. Only the cancellation of that ballot and a promise to cease recruitment prevented the TUC taking disciplinary action against NEU.

While the TUC supported “cleaner politics”, by which it deplored the ravings of Nigel Farage, it wisely did not specify what action might be taken just in case union donations to Labour also came under scrutiny.

While there was unanimous support for a Second Employment Rights Bill to supplement the watered-down one from Sir Keir Starmer (who?), it is unlikely that the union bureaucrats who like to call themselves “professional negotiators” will be keen on actually campaigning for the removal of the 50 per cent ballot threshold as that could mean more work in organising strike action.

One motion, from the now microscopic National Union of Mineworkers, successfully called upon the TUC to continue its support for the Ukrainian regime, alleging that workers at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have been detained and abused by the Russians. Oddly enough this motion forgot to mention the recent reburial in Ukraine of individuals who spent the Second World War slaughtering Poles and Jews.

On a more positive note, Congress made much of solidarity with Cuba, hearing a speech from the head of the Cuban TUC. Cuban solidarity is very popular at the TUC when delegates get a chance to show solidarity with the Cuban working class, particularly those working in the Havana Club distillery.

On a more cynical note, Cuba solidarity is seen by the Congress House bureaucrats as a harmless way of keeping lefties occupied. This was made clear in August 2006 when Owen Tudor, the TUC’s then international officer, had an agreeable chat about the forthcoming Congress with an American Embassy labour affairs official later made public by WikiLeaks. Tudor lamented that delegates would condemn Israel’s recent military actions but reassured his American visitor that support for Cuba was nothing to worry about as it was just a routine “warhorse issue”.

It is interesting that a motion favouring the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) strategy was moved by the 2,344 strong Artists Union of England, rather than any of the larger unions.