Labour will be Government asking the nicely in the course of the Bill's progress through Parliament if they will give unions collective bargain- ing and recognition rights in law, restore union mem- Page 4
UPDATE Labour shuts up shop
bership rights at GCHQ and protect lawful strikers from dismissal. *even handed rather than one sided approach to industrial relations law". God forbid that Labour should ever try to stick up for the workers against management.
and fading
reports in the press that Blair had top-level union backing for the policy shift - with his support not confined to the predictable right wingers Edmonds (GMB) and Jordan (Engineers" Union, AEU) - but said to include the Transport Workers" 'left" leader Ron Todd, too. new realism gets Labour's leaders in their bid for respectability in the eyes of the Tory law makers, remains to be seen. But one outcome is certain. An estimated one million workers currently covered by closed shop agreements will see their wages, working conditions and jobs cut as their collective protections are removed - and Labour will have been complicit in that, preferring to be seen to bow to a bourgeois notion of "fairness", "choice and individual rights. cover their tracks with a supremely cynical claim that the closed shop represents cosy Charter corporatism which acts to contain militant unionism (which, though it may be the case, is clearly not the cause of Todd's objection). it will be the workers who pay the price for Will the Party abandon its own closed shop?
According to the rules of the Party, most consituencies operate a policy of only accepting as members those people who are willing to join an appropriate trade union, where they are eligible for mem bership. This is because the Party was founded by the trade unions, and most socialists understand that trade unions are a good thing. But Walworth Road looks set to abandon this outdated notion, too.
A cracking pace has been set by Health spokesperson Harriet Harman, and other advocates of closer Labour links with the scab no-
As Blair points out, Labour believes in an their leaders' failures. Even more worrying though, are the How far this renewed headlong dive into went along. Whilst the likes of Ron Todd attempt to ups*. strike Royal College of Nursing. despite angry complaints from health union activists fighting to recruit nurses. Now an 'advertising writer's' wife has used the pages of the Guardian to complain about her husband's difficulties in joining the Labour Party, because he refused to join a union. "They don't have them in advertising' (NUJ? NGA? SOGAT) ... "Anyway, shouldn't union membership be a separate decision from joining a political party?' she argued. The annoying couple wrote to
More 'wrist-flicking' under way?
Campaign Group MPs led by Eric Heffer are opposing the moves in Parliament, but claim to have much broader PLP support too. The left in the unions face a hard task to build up the pressure needed to fight a rearguard action on this - but pressure on the likes of MSF leader Ken Gill, and in the printing unions, will be key.
Meanwhile poor old Tribune is bemoaning the fact that Blair's move will undermine party members confidence in the Policy Review. The rationale given for the review process - accepted by Tribune - was that by forging a consensus on policy, Shadow Cabinet members would be less likely to ig nore the members and make up policy as they
Blair's move will encourage, says the newspaper's editorial, "the suspicion, nursed by some but not shared by Tribune, that the policy review was actually intended to reduce the influence over policy-making of party conference and active members and allow more such traditional Labour-style stitch-
It certainly takes some people a long time to catch on, doesn't it?
JANE WELLS Helping Mrs Angry - Whitty Kinnock. At least he knocked them back by getting a lackey to reply. implying that he shouldn't be bothered by Mr and Mrs Angry. They got further with General Secretary Larry Whitty, however, who they claim told them that "union membership was an out dated rule. The idea was to encourage people to join a union -not ban them if they couldn't (or presumably, wouldn't!). SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
Behind Clarke's hard line on ambulance dispute