Uniting the trade union left is key to halt the decline
The left did well in some of this year's trade union conferences. In the NUT the vote was won for a ballot over performance related pay (PRP). In the postal and telecom union CWU the left defeated the platform over the funding of the Labour Party.
The civil service union PCS at its conference instructed the NEC to launch a fight to restore national pay bargaining and launch a campaign against privatisation.
And the left has done well in some of the elections as well. Dave Rix ousted Adams in 1998 in the train drivers' union ASLEF. Greg Tucker got a good vote against Jimmy Knapp for general secretary last year in the main rail union, the RMT. Roger Banister polled well for general secretary of Britain's biggest union, the public sector UNISON.
In smaller unions such the FBU, RMT, ASLEF, the Bakers' Union, the NUJ and the NUM the left has remained relatively strong. The Fire Brigades Union have had a number of strikes (Essex for example) and strike ballots.
Despite these positive developments, however, wining conference votes is one thing, but getting union leaders, who were opposed to them in the first place, to carry them out is another matter. The NUT NEC has set aside conference policy on PRP, and the union faces a damaging defeat as a result.
And the widely-held view on the left that higher levels of trade union struggle would emerge after new Labour had been elected to office has not happened. In fact the situation is now worse.
The catastrophic decline of union membership experienced during the 1980s has also continued. The slight upturn recently seems to be more as a result of the fall in unemployment (distorted as the figures might be) than any efforts by the TUC or its much vaunted Organising Academy.
Strike levels in Britain also remain at an all-time low with only minor fluctuations. 1999 ranked with 1997 as having the lowest number of strikes since records began in the 1880s.
All this has meant that, in sector after sector, the ability of the employers to force through their requirements - from mass redundancies to a range of new management techniques aimed at squeezing more out of the work force - remain untouched.
There have, however, been opportunities recently to start to turn this around by clocking up some victories. The most important was around BMW's decision to break up Rover, and the huge working class demonstration in Birmingham which turned out on April 1 to defend Longbridge.
It was clear, at the huge rally at the end, that any militant proposal from the platform would have got a massive response - even the occupation of parts of the Longbridge site. Such a traumatic event could have been the start of a wider fight back in defence of jobs manufacturing jobs.
All this was disastrously diverted into hopeless choice between two sets of venture capitalists.
In a smaller way the lobby of the Ford UK offices in Kensington on June 22 by over 700 Ford Dagenham workers (during working hours) in opposition to the closure of the PTA also demonstrated the possibility of generating resistance there,with similar potential consequences.
The harsh reality, however, is that unless key opportunities like these are grasped and built on it is very difficult to make the breakthrough needed.
But the problem is not just industrial and organisational, it is political. It is rooted in the political evolution of the TUC and the leaders of the main unions since the defeats of the 1980s (in which they also played a decisive role), and the relationship they have now forged with new Labour in office.
After the defeats of the 80s they refused to capitalise on either the anti-poll tax revolt or the upsurge of anger against the new round of Tory pit closures in 1992. Even the rise in strike levels across Europe in the mid-90s, triggered by the preparation by various European governments for the single currency, had no reflection in Britain.
After being elected to office, New Labour consciously capitalised on this weakness by launching a series of attacks on the working class through its maintenance of Tory spending limits, its implementation of the fiscal criteria for the single currency, and the deregulation and privatisation which went along with Blair's enthusiastic endorsement of the neo-liberal agenda of the American right.
The trade union leaders not only backed new Labour to the hilt, but their damaging new realism of the eighties and early 90s evolved into the even more pernicious idea of "social partnership". This was codified by the TUC at its 1997 Congress by the adoption of Partners for Progress - a decision which enshrined the idea of a "social partnership" with the employers.
This represented the TUC's definitive accommodation to neoliberalism. Social partnership represents the idea of the identity of interest between the employers and the workers and sees the solution for the workers as ensuring the success of the employers.
At that same Congress resolutions calling for the repeal of all Tory anti-union laws to be dropped and a list of "realistic" demands adopted which included the statutory right of union recognition, a national minimum wage, the implementation of the EU's social chapter, the protection of all workers from day one of employment, and the restoration of union rights at the government's GCHQ Cheltenham spy centre.
But if the TUC leaders thought this was going to cut any ice with new Labour they were disappointed. New Labour relentlessly forged a new relationship with the employers, which quickly became qualitatively different to that of any previous Labour government.
In fact within a year of Labour taking office a big section of the employers were seeing it as the best representative of British capital.
When new Labour's trade union legislation emerged, in the form of the Trade Union Bill, it was the expected damp squib. The EU's social chapter was to be adopted, surprise surprise, and the unions were recognised at Cheltenham - such as they were by that time.
The minimum wage was introduced, but at a pathetic £3.60 for an adult (£3.00 for young people) and the union recognition provisions were dismally weak: workplaces of over 21 (a restriction which excludes 5m workers) could ballot for recognition, but would have to get a positive vote from 40% of the total work force to win it.
Far from reversing Tory privatisation measures, new Labour extended them dramatically. This led to proposals to privatise Air Traffic Control, the introduction of Education Action Zones, the introduction of the Private Finance Initiative into the NHS, and many other such schemes.
A similar "Public-Private Partnership" (PPP) was also proposed as the means of financing the London Tube system. Compulsory competitive tendering in the public sector was replaced by 'Best Value'. And as far as pay was concerned, Tony Blair started to say that even the idea of a regular pay review was in contradiction to the idea of a social partnership.
Despite this, the TUC leadership (and the leaders of the main unions) not only remained loyal to new Labour, but protected it where necessary. Tenacious strikes resisting attacks from the employers by staff at Magnet kitchens, Hillingdon Hospital, the Tameside care workers, and Sky Chefs, were either refused recognition or given official support but denied the real backing they needed if they were to have a chance of winning.
Even the remarkable fighting spirit of the Liverpool dockers, with huge international support (although far less in Britain of course) got nothing out of the election of new Labour. And the union leaders have been quick to witch hunt those fighting for socialist policies or challenging their right-wing agenda.
The resistance which did emerge was very important of course. As well as the strikes listed above a range of other localised disputes took place such as the recent occupation at Kvaerner on Clyde Bank, there has been resistance to PFI at UCH hospital in central London, and various disputes on the railways, including the recent strikes in defence of Sarah Friday. They did not, however, alter the overall situation.
This month, Labour's Employment Act eventually came into force, leaving the main bulk of Tory anti-union laws in place.
New Labour has the mid-term shakes, and suffered a humiliating defeat with the election of Ken Livingstone as mayor of London. But the trade union leaders remain loyal to Blair's project - or at least they remain loyal to his government, and will do anything necessary to keep it in office and get it reelected.
In these conditions the way the trade union left - dramatically weakened by the decline of the shop stewards' movement since the mid 1980s - organises itself assumes great importance.
The key problem has been that of unity, or the lack of it. Socialist Outlook has long advocated, and taken initiatives towards, the idea of cross-union left structures in order to generalise experiences, spread solidarity and help develop an ideological struggle against the right-wing.
In the end this argument has always fallen on stony ground. And the reasons are clear enough. The problem of unity has remained unresolved within many of the individual unions, and if there was no real grasp of the problems posed by that then the idea of cross-union organisation would not have much urgency.
Today, however, an important new opportunity to start to end some of the divisions of the trade union left has presented itself.
It comes out of the same political imperative which is producing new levels of unity in the fields of electoral interventions (and to a certain extent in campaigns on social issues) - the realisation that neither the problems nor the opportunities presented can be confronted without overcoming the divisions of the past.
This is the case whether what is involved is filling the space opening up to the left of new Labour and building an alternation to Blairism, or conducting successful campaigns in the unions against social partnership or ensuring the implementation of conference resolutions.
In short the impetus towards unity that led to the formation of the Socialist Alliances needs to be applied at the level of the trade unions as well. All those who are opposed to the neo-liberal offensive and the way the trade union leaderships kow-tow to it need to be part of a united fight back.
Fortunately this is beginning to happen. Most importantly the SWP seems to be ending its isolationism within the trade union left and promoting unity in a number of unions. This remains uneven but it is potentially of great importance.
The SWP took the initiative for a joint public meeting with the rest of the left at PCS conference. In UNISON the SWP has proposed the unification of the left, and formation of a united left organisation. A joint left fringe meeting was held which attracted 400 delegates. There is a perspective of forming a new organisation in the autumn.
Perhaps even more significantly the SWP have, in recent days, taken the first steps towards uniting the left in the NUT - a left which ended up split three ways when the SWP walked out of the Socialist Teachers Alliance some years ago.
Unity is not an easy process after years of division, but the benefits of uniting the left in several major unions are enormous. There is a great responsibility on all sectors of the left to ensure that this opportunity is taken and built on.
The union with the most strikes in recent years has been the CWU, many of them unofficial and illegal. This year's conference saw a strong challenge by the left particularly on the issue of the privatisation of the postal service and the affiliation to and funding of the Labour party - an issue coming increasingly to the for in the unions as the Blairites move ever further the right, posing the need for an alternative to Labour at the political level.
CWU delegates voted that if new Labour privatises any part of the post office, the union will withdraw "all financial and moral support to the Labour Party" - which seems close to disaffiliation.
CWU General Secretary Hodgson had said he was appalled that the resolution was even on the agenda. The following day this was underlined by a vote not to increase financial support to Labour at the present time. The conference also overturned action taken against North London postal workers for giving financial support to Ken Livingstone and to the London Socialist Alliance.
There is clearly an increasing reluctance of unions to continue to bankroll Labour whilst its ministers are attacking their members. As well as the discussion within the CWU, there have been serious debates within the FBU and RMT.
Socialists need to support moves to liberate the political funds from bureaucratic rules which prevent support for those to the left of new Labour acting in defence of trade union policies, while funding Blairite candidates who are attacking their jobs, conditions and services.
One idea being raised is that money should be allocated on the basis of a vote of trade union members - far more democratic than the current system.
Obviously the current lack of any organised political alternative to new Labour means that dissaffiliation from the Labour Party at this stage would neither be practical nor correct.
But given Livingstone's election as Mayor of London, and following the election of the Scottish Socialist Party's Tommy Sheridan and Dennis Canavan as an independent to the Scottish Parliament, the idea that there can be credible candidates to the left of Labour is much easier to argue than would have been the case previously.
Given Blair's trajectory, this debate will become increasingly important over the next few years.