JOHN SMITH'S ambition fundamentally to undermine Labour's links to the unions came a step closer to fruition this month when a meeting of the party's working group appeared to give him everything he wanted.
Statements after the meeting by TGWU and GMB leaders - who had been represented at the meeting - that the document was just a 'basis for discussion' were a lame apology.
The aim of the Labour leadership, 'one member one vote' (OMOV) remains intact.
in the meantime they are prepared to accept a 'compromise, which will involve a "levy plus' arrangement, giving members of affiliated unions the right to vote in the party if they pay a supplementary fee - making them the equivalent of full party members'.
Establishing such a system, which would require unions to maintain immensely complex registers of their various categories of members, would take a long time. PublicisDon't miss a single issue of Socialist Outlook! Subscribe today. EC/Europe (inc Britain): 1 year (24 issues) £15. 6 months (12 isues) £8. Non-EC Europe 1 year £20. 6 months Ell. Rest of world 1 year £24. 6 months £13.
I include a donation of £... NAME. ADDRESS. ing the arrangement and persuading any measurable number of workers to pay up a supplement on their union dues would take even longer.
It would probably prove impossible to run: in oractice the "levy plus' system seems to be being deliberately set up to Tail - a mere staging post to OMOV.
In the immediate term, because of the delays in setting it running, levy-plus" is a certain recipe for conducting the next round of parliamentary selection on the basis of one member, one vote - the system publicly opposed by both GMB and TGWU leaders because it undermines the principle of union affiliation.
GMB leader John Edmonds, together with Arthur Scargill, has rightly identified the link between Smith's obsession with breaking the union link and the utter failure of the Labour leadership to effectively campaign against the Tories.
But unlike Scargill, Edmonds and his fel-. low right wing union leaders bear the main responsibility for successively backing Kinnock and then Smith in their conception of what the Labour Party ought to become.
Indeed the fatal flaw: in Edmond's critique is that he has no real alternative.
Moreover it is obvious that Edmonds and his ilk are concerned only to protect the personal influence of top national bureaucrats. This is why they concentrate only on national policies and the election of the party leader. They are ready to sell out on the more localised process of selecting MPs, which affects ordinary union members.
Meanwhile Smith is undermining the stated objective of his campaign: that Labour must become a "mass party' on the model of the million-strong German SPD.
While Smith struggles to break the union link, Labour's individual membership is falling. in some paces drastically.
There is no need to look far to discover wiry: the millions of people bitterly opposed ¡ Yes please! • Send me more details about the Summer School Summer School • Tell me if there is transport available from my area Name .... Post Code N/ 2UU. @August 1993. Printed by to the Tories are totally underwhelmed by Labour's performance, its lack o! campaigning, its lack of a clear alternative programme, its capitulation to the Tories on the most fundamental economic questions.
Every concession Smith squeezes out of the union leaders in the arm-twisting before Labour conference is a blow against building a real mass party which fights for a working class alternative. dates agreed by the union conferences will not be respected, and a compromise on Smith's terms will be agreed - striking another blow against democracy.
The Tories are looking on in undisguised giee. Smashing up the Labour Party as a party with strong organised links with the unions was always part and parcel of the Thatcherite agenda. Now they hope to sit back and let Smith do the job they failed to do with their legislation on union affiliation.
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