THE COMMUNICATION Workers Union Broad Left (BL) has voted by a 23-19 margin to back jeannie Drake the current Clerica Deputy General Secretary for the post of Telecom Deputy General Secretary in the forthcoming union This move, backed by a majority of BL NEC members, represents a significant shift to the right by the BL Drake is an able soft left bureaucrat. who leads the union negotiating team on major issues of pay and conditions with BT. She has played a leading role in the last two rounds of pay negotiations which have seen BT staff pay stagnate, the introduction of profit-related pay which opens the way for performance-related pay. and agreement with the creation of a new low paid engineering grade at 610k per year.
Drake's supporters argue that she "is the only candidate capable of uniting the Telecom Constituency of the CWU." The Telecom Consituency consists of the BL-dominated Engineering and the right-wing controlled Clerical Constituency. It rapidly became apparent that there was no openly agreed policy basis for this unity NEC member Bernard Roome, in seconding the nomination, pointed out her negotiating abilities, but that sometimes you didn't know who she was negotiating for!
One is a Socialist Party member. Steve Bell went further, openly admitting that she was a Blairite! Arguments were advanced that no prominent BL supporter on the National Executive was willing to stand, that the BL had to be seen to win something after recent defeats in the General and Deputy General Secretary elections. Opponents argued that the fail. ure of any leading BL supporter to put their heads above the electoral parapet was a problem in itself, that the certainty of victory should never be a criterion for presenting a candidate. Hitherto it has been BL policy only to support BL members in union elections. Drake's supporters argued that the BL would gain 'prestige and standing from a Drake victory. Opponents pointed out that by the same token the BL would have to take ine tap tor brakes tuture actions, even though she has no allegiance to the BL and its poli. cies The 23-19 vote means that the majority of non-NEC BL members present opposed the proposal. Far from uniting the Telecom Consitituency, many traditional BL supporting branches particularly will refuse to endorse her.
The reality is that this represents a shift to the right on the part of the BL leadership and in no way represents a movement to the left on Drake's part. It also represents a failure of strategy and nerve.
While the BL has now become totally dominant in the engineering constituency it has failed to break out into the clerical and above all into the postal (ex UCW) constituency.
Derek Hodgson's victory as General Secretary last year, his subsequent moves to place his ex UCW cronies in kcy positons, and unc witchhunting of BL NEC member Maria Exall for assisting efforts to organise the postal left has persuaded the BL majority to give up even trying to build a union-wide left.
It must also be remembered that Drake's negotiating "achievements" listed above were all actively supported by the BL TeleThe CWU Broad Left, one of the "new" Broad Lefts which came into existence at the end of the 1970s in the old Post Office Engineering Union, has now reached It is time for socialists within and outside the BL to meet to consider how to take the fight against social partnership forward within the
A new column by Charlie van Gelderen SOCIALIST OUTLOOK S