NALGO Left
shows its
strength
By Fred Leplat (Islington NALGO) and Carolyn Sikorski (Newham NALGO). NALGO's first-ever general secretary election, held in April, resulted in a victory for deputy general secretary, rightwing Kinnockite Alan Jinkinson.
Jinkinson won 49 per cent of the vote. But the 23 per cent for Roger Bannister, a Militant supporter from Merseyside running on a "broad left' ticket, showed the strength of the hard left in NALGO. Bannister's vote, with the 3.6 percent for WRP supporter Chris Goody, gave the hard left over a quarter of the vote. The other candidate, soft left West Midlands district organiser Sid Platt, won 24 per cent.
Although elections are only ever a fleeting snapshot, the result says a lot about NALGO. Last year NALGO's half million local government workers staged their first-ever national pay strikes, which were highly successful.
In part the election result reflects the resulting militancy and new-found confidence. But the union remains much less polarised than, for example, the NUT. The union's leadership has been relatively successful, despite its tacit new realism, in maintaining a broad consensus around its just left-ofcentre positions.
Left policies accepted
One thing above all has enabled this stability to be maintained - local government white collar workers, the core of NALGO's membership, have not been so savagely attacked as other public sector workers.
Privatisation and compulsory competitive tendering have hit mainly manual workers. Employment among white collar workers has held up, although most remain very low paid. Thus the union has been able to maintain the jobs and living standards of most of its members without prolonged militant national action or confronting the anti-trade union laws. Most NALGO industrial action consists of dispersed local disputes.
The mechanism utilised by the union leadership to maintain its dominance has been largely to accept the adoption of left-wing policies on a range of political issues, while heading off moves towards militant industrial action, especially that which would involve
FEATURES
NA direct confrontation with the government.
Thus NALGO has opportunities equal policies that are among the most advanced in the trade union movement; it is affiliated to CND;
and has a wide range of generally left-wing positions on international questions. Yet union's the bureaucracy headed off any serious action over rate-capping and the abolition of the
Metropolitan authorities in the mid-
1980s, a key factor in enabling these measures to go through.
Poll Tax
Jim White, chair of the union's local government commit-Industrial Action over this year's pay clalm likely tee, successfully prevented the adoption of a non-implementation position on the poll tax at the 1989 conference. This will be a key issue at NALGO's
Boumemouth conference in June.
Last year the union leadership just scraped a majority for a resolution that said that non- implementation should only be considered when a mass campaign of non-payment already existed. This year, it will be much less possible to use the same argument as millions of people are already not paying the tax.
The poll tax will be at the centre of the confrontation between the left and the union leadership at this year's conference. For
NALGO, which has recruited thousands of new poll tax staff, and whose finance and housing department workers are deeply involved in carrying it out, is the one union that could knock the tax stone cold dead.
Local government pay
NALGO's 1990 pay claim - a flat rate claim for £1500, an average of 14 per cent - will be a key battle in this year's pay round.
The local government employers seem unlikely to offer more than 8 per cent, well below
MALGO
memberssay
no anatier
Standaris
STOIthe rate of inflation. This would almost certainly trigger a national strike ballot.
However the employers will be much more organised and prepared than in 1989 and national strike action could tum into a long slog. The NALGO leadership's tactic of selective strike action could prove much less effective than last year. Militants in the union have to organise for an all-out strike, as the most ef fective way to win.
A mega-union?
For more than two years NALGO has been discussing merger with the manual workers public sector union NUPE - a process which the health service union COHSE joined in last year. Without doubt, the drive for merger is motivated by bureaucratic self-interest.
The trend is towards the creation of half a dozen 'super unions' through mergers. The NALGO, NUPE and COHSE leaderships are protecting themselves from predators like John Edmonds' GMB through this merger. Financial considerations play an important role; NUPE, whose membership has declined much faster than NALGO's, is in dire financial straits. NALGO, despite temporary
problems, has huge accumulated reserves.
Whatever motivation the bureaucracy, the left also supports merger.
The division between manual and white collar workers is increasingly redundant.
The new union could wield considerable clout - with 1.6 million members (more than a million of them women) it would be the largest single union in the TUC. Thus the political stance of this new union would be of vital importance for the whole future of the labour movement. The new union would be the major union in the
NHS (the country's biggest single employer), and dominate local government.
Affiliation
A key complication in the merger process is the issue of
Labour Party affiliation. Despite its political fund and explicit anti-
Tory propaganda at election times,
NALGO is the largest union not affiliated to the TUC
The NUPE leadership, especially in the person of Tom
Sawyer, is a key component of
Kinnock's right-wing flank guard in the union bureaucracy. Merger would likely be followed by a ballot in the fused union over affiliation; if carried, the fused union would be an enormous force inside the Labour Party.
Self-organisation
NALGO is unique in having self-organised groups of the op pressed formally recognised as official structures. Thus it has an active and dynamic black members* group, and national steering committees representing women, lesbians and gay men, and people
However, there has been a long fight on the issue of the autonomy of these groups, ending with a stalemate at the 1989 conference at which no position was passed. The issue has come to a head particularly over the right of the Black members group to decide its own structure. Again at this year's conference there will be an enormous set-piece battle on this.
The same issue of autonomy is involved in the refusal of NALGO's executive to agree to the right of NALGO's women's conference to submit motions directly to national conference.
International issues
Despite the influence of the Morning Star stalinists on international policy, NALGO has throughout the 1980s supported both the revolution in Central America and Solidarnose in Poland. Last year the union adopted, against the advice of the platform, support for the
FEATURES
Time to Go campaign on Ireland.
of the on the struggle an important fight on this issue.
Politicisation of NALGO naigo
UTION
PICKET ried out by the leadership of the union, the long-term trend in NALGO is towards a sharpening polarisation and a more politicised union. The Tory anti-union laws imposed an deeply resented by the bureaucracy.
politicisation. Merger with unions affiliated to the Labour Party will also inevitably mean a more political union. Above all, the situation facing local government workers inevitably will sharpen political conflicts.
able to defend their members' employment and conditions through local skirmishes and manoeuvres, this is unlikely to last. Poll tax capping is likely to result in the first wide-
But the crisis in easter Europe and the Soviet Union has made the executive waver against the stalinist bureaucracy. In particular the union's international committee has refused to support the independent Soviet trade union Sotsprof because 'the situation is not clear'. There is likely to be
Overall, despite the holding-operation car-
NAIGO
PAY UP
NOW!
election for general secretary on NALGO, one
Open elections are bound to help deepen
While many NALGO branches have been defeat new realism.
ranging redundancies among white collar local government workers. The poll tax is thus a dagger aimed not only at local services, but at employment in local government as well.
Strings
Last year the local goverment employers tried to impose flexible working and local pay bargaining as part of the pay deal. Outrage at the 'strings' was part of the reason for the huge support for the strike action.
The employers have a long-term strategy aimed at undermining national pay bargaining and conditions. The
NALGO leadership is starting to preach 'realism' on these issues.
Concessions on these questions will lead to a major battle in the union.
Thus the NALGO leadership's policy of manoeuvres and negotiations will run out of steam: the polarisation in the union between those who want to fight, and the leadership that does not, will deepen.
Left must organise
The lack of a sharp political polarisation reflects itself in the ab sence of stable left wing organisation. The influential Morning Star supporters do not want left organisation; they prefer to maintain their influence through being the useful left cover and ornament of the bureaucracy. They supported the right-wing candidate,
Alan
Jinkinson, in the general secretary clection.
Both Militant and the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP) have substantial numbers of supporters in the union. But successive attempts to build a functioning Broad Left had foundered on their sectarianism. Militant want a broad left which is a Militant front; the
SWP is only interested in its own recruitment and propaganda.
Nevertheless the left forces in
NALGO go way beyond these two currents; as the polarisation in the union deepens, the political basis for an on-going left current will emerge. The new journal
NALGO Action, which has the backing of 30 branches, is attempting to reach out to all those on the left through information and debate on the union's strategy. This will be especially important when the merger with
NUPE and COHSE goes through.
As the dominant union in local government and the NHS, the new union will be a critical component of the working class movement.
Building a united and fighting class struggle co-ordination in NALGO is a key task in the fight to renovate the labour movement and
Page 12 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990-