Labour Party conference the left experiences a surge of renewed interest in the unions. After Blackpool we can sately predict yet another round of debate over whether and how the block vote should be reformed and its use democratised. The issue is important: however, if past form is anything to go by, interest will fade as the debate goes on, and by next year's trade union conference season the left will find itself once more on the defensive, seeking to combat a much more developed attack.
The right wing have their own axe to grind. Kinnock's antipathy to the block vote system, and the willingness of arch new-realist GMB leader John Edmonds to see its influence curbed have nothing to do with any desire for democratisation: neither Kinnock nor Edmonds has been averse to the systematic use by male-dominated unions of block votes to crush the demands of Labour's women's section. But now they see the block vote as an expression of the collective, class politics of the working class - and as such an electoral embarrassment. They much prefer the politics of the passive individual which 'new realism' has borrowed wholesale from Thatcher.
Of course we must not ignore the Labour Party dimension of the trade union struggle: the line-up of block votes prior to Blackpool made not only the leadership election but the endorsement of the policy review documents a formality. Only the defiance of Transport and General Workers Union leader Ron Todd - under seige from a Hammondite right wing inside his own union, and desperately seeking to buttress himself with left wing support - offered any respite from the new realist juggernaut.
While the Tory press kept querying whether Todd's stand on unilateralism represented his members' views, there is no reason to believe that the block votes cast by hard right union chiefs are necessarily representative of their rank and file. The size of the fringe meetings that were organised at this year's union conferences by the Benn-Heffer campaign, and the support for the campaign among stewards and union militants showed as usual much greater support in the unions than the minuscule union vote they attracted in the leadership election. Labour Briefing's analysis of the voting showed some unions voting 40 per cent for Benn, yet casting block votes for Kinnock.
However this pool of largely untapped support also tells its own story about the way left activists tend to approach the trade unions: for many, the unions are seen primarily in terms of their block votes at Labour conference or as a factor in Constituency Labour Party and other internal Party battles.
This approach is dangerously mistaken. The unions represent much more than block votes: they are the basic form of organisa tion of the working class at workplace level. They must do much more than decide Labour policy on unilateralism once a year: they must lead struggles over jobs, pay, and health and safety. And for the left to strengthen its hand inside the unions, we must be identified with these bread and butter issues as well as the jam of conference resolutions and policy debates.
There is a continual overlap of issues - all of which point to the need for the left to become more systematically involved in trade union struggles. The same union bureaucrats who stitched up the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 10 November 1988
leadership election and policy review votes also conspired to isolate and ensure defeat for the miners in 1984-5 and the News International printworkers: they are even now isolating and betraying the P&O seafarers. Tom Sawyer and the leadership of the National Union of Public Employees are not only right wing in the Labour
Abut doggedly opposed to strike action to fight cuts or privatisation in the NHS or local government.
Many campaigning issues taken up by the left in the Labour Party can also be given real teeth in the unions. Obvious examples include taking up the plight of part-time workers, the fight against low pay, for women's rights at work, and supporting struggles of black workers. Some unions already offer opportunities for self-organisation of black workers and women. Others, like the GMB and TGWU made oniy token gestures.
While the existing union leaderships consistently limit, isolate and sabotage the disputes which continue to erupt, there has been a small but significant initiative by left wingers who have learned the hard way that they must fight for an alternative approach. The Solidarity Network, drawing together militants from the miners strike, the Silentnight strike, the printworkers' strike and other support movements, was launched a year ago at a conference in Leeds. Its small beginnings accurately reflected the levels of awareness on the left of the need to organise such work and create a systematic fightback in the unions which can in turn offer practical support and leadership to new sections of workers as they become involved in strike action. The Network has made important links with the Socialist Conference movement and done useful solidarity work with P&O and other disputes, and is to hold a further con-
There are other important beginnings of a fightback, with active, if small, broad lefts in many unions committed to challenge the present bureaucratic leaderships.
Such trade union work does not begin or end with Labour Party issues: indeed there are many important battles to be waged in unions (NUT, NALGO, civil service unions) that are not affiliated to the Labour Party - but which are also helping to reinforce the new realists through the TUC.
Serious trade union work is a tough fight, battling to organise the left to oppose the bureaucracy, giving attention to the day to day detail of workplaces, and becoming involved in often less than glamourous disputes, as well as close contact with militants newly
But without such a fight at the base of the unions and the building of a political opposition to the new realists at the top, workers are not going to be mobilised to break the right wing grip on the union structures - including the block vote. There is a real danger under these conditions that socialism can be reduced to empty propaganda - and that all the good intentions of following through Labour's conference by a renewed fight in the unions could come
Let's take up the debate on the block vote - but from a position of strengthened involvement in the unions at every level: that's one angle of attack Kinnock & Co. will not expect from the left!
Page 1
Right wing to Hammond's rescue Build the Newcastle conference
HELP is at hand for leaders of the electricians' union (EETPU) fighting to retain their membership after the union's expulsion from the TUC.
Leaders of the builders' union (UCATT) and the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) have said that they recognise the EETPU as a bona-fide trade union and will not recruit its members or see its representatives removed from trade union bodies.
Ford electricians who have decided to leave the EETPU and joint the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) have received a letters from the EETPU warning them that their action will amount to support to a new hard left grouping - the Electrical and Plumbing Industries Union (EPIU) - which is now established as a union and is recruiting members.
Of MSF the letter says: "The motivation to get you to join the MSF is purely political - it is the most left-wing union your repreDAVID Blunkett's reply to the debate on the Poll tax at Labour party conference showed the depths to which the Kinnockites are prepared to sink to be seen as a respectable party of government.
He argued that we wanted the poll tax to be implemented so that the Tories would be so unpoular that Labour would be elected. He showed his complete contempt not only for those in Scotland being fined at this moment for refusing to register, but for the thousands upon thousands who will have no choice other than non-payment. When the leadership argue that people will be led into poverty and debt though resistance to the tax, they show their ignorance of Page 2
U PD AIT EETPU sentatives could find'. A similar letter has been sent to electricians working for Manchester city council who have also said they will leave the union.
Militant electricians should stick to their guns. The most effective way to destroy EETPU leader Eric Hammond's credibility is to leave his union.
Despite its latest display of 'independence' in balloting over strike action on the GCHQ issue, the EETPU is a hardened business union. The Hammond leadership have set out over a long period to educate the membership in these principles. The recent ballot decision on defiance of the TUC and risking expulsion showed that they have had some success. At the same time the Hammond leadership have crushed any opposition to this procees and stripped the EETPU of any last vestiges of democratic structures. If the EETPU was bad before that ballot, it will be much worse after it.
The actions of Hammond and Co. at Wapping have still not been matched by any other union: joinPoll Tax the reality facing millions under third term Thatcherism.
The London week of action against the Poll tax, which greeted Parliament's return, was led off by a successful demonstration in South London. This is just one of many initiatives across England and Wales which demonstrates that when the left wakes up to the centrality of this issue there is a good deal of potential support which can be mobilised.
The conference called by Chesterfield in Newcastle on Deceber 10th can provide a much needed forum to generalise the lessons of the fight in Scotland, to bring together activists working around the campaign and to publicise the impact of this vicous attack on the working class.
A E ing together with employers to break other unions; replacing printers with electicians; using their own offices to recruit scabs for Murdoch, and using their own training centre to train scabs to do the jobs of strikers. The organisafion they have created is now only comparable with scab organisations like the UDM or the new "union' formed by the scabs at P&O.
We should not treat such organisations as we would treat a legitimate but right-wing trade union. In a right-wing trade union we would fight from the inside, but with the business unions our aim should be to break them as soon as possible. The whole of the left has called, with some success, miners to leave the UDM and join a proper union - and we should have the same position with the
Electricians can join either the appropriate union with negotiating rights in the industry where they work - MSF or the GMB or TGWU - or the EPIU. The
It is therefore unfortunate that some forces within Poll Tax groups are not responding positively to this event.The Communist Party in particular, are witholding support because the meeting has been called by the Socialist Conference.They have yet to explain what they disagree with in the statement issued to obtain sponsorship. But the mere use of the word 'socialist' makes their popular-frontist hackles rise.
In this context it is also problematic that another conference is being organised in Oxford on Nov 26th. Many activists have argued that this will result in a fragmented movement, with the north prioritising Newcastle and the south, Oxford. Nor do we believe that the crucial job at the
problem the EPIU has is getting recognition from employers, most of whom will be loyal to Hammond, although the new union is seeking recognition from a number of local authorities. One solution is joint membership of a union with negotiating rights as well as the EPIU.
Similar principles should be followed on trades councils and other local bodies. It is illogical to support the expulsion of the EETPU from the TUC and urge its expulsion from the Labour Party if itisto berecognised as a legitimate union at local level. EETPU delegates should be excluded from Trades Councils, District Committees of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, shop stewards' committees and joint negotiations with employers.
Where EPIU branches, or even electricians in holding sections of other unions, are able to send delegates they should be accepted minute is to structure the existing poll tax organisations; the job of building such groups through actions which will publicise the effects of the tax is much more of a priority.
The stakes are too high to let sectarianism or orgnaisational ineptitude weaken our resistance. The Newcastle conference must be built and from it a mass demonstration, with official labour movement support called for April.
Terry Conway
* Conference *
'Build the opposition to the Poll Tax' Newcastle Medical School
December 10, 11am-ópm SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 10 November 1988
What next after the
Chilean Generals view British military hardware A ROAR of approval went up around the world as the news came out that General Pinochet had lost the plebiscite in Chile on October 5.
All but the most hardened reactionary of Thatcherite gave a cheer. You can imagine the scene in Santiago as people danced through the night: a serious cause
The breadth of support for the celebrations in Britain was as wide as it was in Chile. It was a rare occasion in the recent Labour