It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, June 08, 2024
Keir’s army: 14 ex-military candidates standing as Labour makes nuclear vow
James Moules
2nd June, 2024,
Credit: John Healey via Twitter/X
More than a dozen ex-military personnel are now standing as general election candidates for Labour amid a drive to bolster the party’s credentials on national security.
Three more armed forces veterans have been confirmed as prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) in the late selections made by the party centrally in the past week, taking the total of ex-service personnel standing for Labour to 14.
It came as Keir Starmer reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to a nuclear deterrent ‘triple lock’ on Monday, including pledges to build four new nuclear submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, maintain continuous at-sea deterrent and ensure all future upgrades are delivered.
Starmer said: “National security will always come first in the changed Labour Party I lead. Keeping our country safe is the bedrock of stability that the British people rightly expect from their government.
“My message to them is clear: Labour has changed. No longer the party of protest, Labour is the Party of national security.
“The excellent former service personnel that are standing as Labour candidates are a testament to that change.”
The latest batch of ex-military PPCs include former Royal Marines Colonel Al Carns, who will stand for the West Midlands seat of Birmingham Selly Oak.
Army veteran Louise Jones and former RAF commanding officer Calvin Bailey will also be candidates in North East Derbyshire and Leyton and Wanstead respectively.
Labour has also committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.
Shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “The Tories have cut the army to its smallest size since Napoleon, missed recruitment targets every year, and allowed morale to fall to record lows. Our armed forces can’t afford another five years of the Conservatives.
“Britain will be better defended with Labour. In government, the UK’s nuclear deterrent will be the bedrock of Labour’s defence plans to keep Britain safe and grow our economy.”
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James Moules is a freelance reporter for LabourList and other publications.jamesmoules
Ming Vase Politics: UK Labour and Purging the Corbynistas
by Binoy Kampmark / June 3rd, 2024
By any reckoning, this was the move of a fool. A fool, it should be said, motivated by spite larded with caution. Evidently playing safe, adopting what has been called a “Ming Vase strategy” (hold it with scrupulous care; avoid danger), the British Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer is already laying its own boobytraps to step onto. This is some feat, given that Labour currently leads the incumbent Tories by such a margin it is projected to win a majority of 194 seats, giving them 422 in all.
With the election campaign still salad green, Starmer has made it clear that a number of the progressive faithful will no longer be expected to keep him company on his way into government – assuming he doesn’t cock matters up before July 4. A cull is being made of the old Labour guard, and they are not going away quietly.
One is a former leader of the party, an unabashed progressive who has been hugging the left side of politics since he was a callow teenager. Jeremy Corbyn, a member for London’s Islington North for over four decades and party leader for five years, is running as an independent. In March, the National Executive Committee (NEC) voted by 22 to 12 to approve a motion proposed by Starmer insisting that it was “not in the best interests of the Labour Party for it to endorse Mr Corbyn as a Labour Party candidate at the next general election.”
The response from Corbyn was resoundingly biting. The move was a “shameful attack on the party of democracy”, showing “contempt” for those who had voted for the party at the 2017 and 2019 elections. “If you start shutting down dissent and preventing people from speaking out, it’s not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness. A sign of strength is when you can absorb and listen to the other person’s arguments,” says Corbyn on the YouTube outlet, Double Down News.
Things were also further muddied by the near juvenile incompetence regarding the future of the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Dianne Abbott, a figure who has been an enduring feature of Labour politics for decades. She was the first black woman to be elected to Parliament, reliably Left, admirably innumerate and always reliable in having a moment of indiscretion. (She had been suspended over comments made in a letter to The Observer claiming that Jews, the Irish and Travellers suffered “prejudice” rather than the “racism” suffered by blacks.) The question here was whether her readmission to the party would qualify her to run again or enable her to journey into a veteran politician’s sunset.
Here was a moment of genuine danger for Labour. Confusion, always fatal for any party seeking government, ignited. Was Abbott banned by her party from running at the next election because of her recently spotty record? Some Labour functionaries thought not, but felt that the NEC should have the last say. Whispers and rumours suggested the opposite.
Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC bored her readers senseless with a slew of anonymous sources that did little to clear things up. “She was looking for a way to stand down with dignity when it was blown all up,” one source claimed. Another is quoted as a “senior ally” of Starmer, suggesting that things had come to a pass. “Everyone was aware of the symbolism. We had to draw the line, it couldn’t just go on and on.”
A strategy is certainly afoot to stay, remove or frustrate candidates of a certain left leaning disposition who fail to fit Starmer’s ultra cautious strategy. They are memory’s heavy burden, a reminder of the roistering, scuffling legacy of the party. Distilled to its essence, it is a crude and clumsy effort to purge the Corbynistas. As Katy Balls of The Spectator appropriately describes it, the Labour leader has been selecting “candidates they trust to have a low risk of scandal or rebellion”.
Economist Faiza Shaheen, for instance, has found herself blocked for taking issue with her party’s Middle East policy, though, as she put it, it entailed “14 tweets over 10 years, including me liking a colleague’s tweet saying she was running as a Green councillor, and a retweet containing a list of companies to boycott to support Palestine, both from 2014.”
In an article for The Guardian, Shaheen describes how she was “removed, via email, from being a Labour parliamentary candidate from Chingford and Woodford Green.” She faced the dreaded NEC regarding her deselection. “More than four years’ work thrown in the bin. Any connection to my community brushed aside.”
Shaheen proceeds to make a fundamental, if obvious political point. “The irony is that taking me off the ballot and replacing me with someone no one in my community knows will jeopardise Labour’s ability to win this seat and finally unseat the Tory grandee Iaian Duncan Smith.”
These instances may not be enough to derail the Labour train that is destined, at this point, of storming into the House of Commons and Number 10 with tearing effect. But Starmer’s culling program is already taking the shine off the effort. Abbott has a loyal following. Those of Corbyn’s are the stuff of legend. Riling, obstructing and barring such figures serves to cloud the message, impairing an electoral effort that may, ironically enough, see the Ming Vase slip out of Starmer’s desperate hands.Facebook
Tory Nightmares: The Return of Nigel Farage
by Binoy Kampmark / June 5th, 2024
Few have exerted as much influence on the tone, and outcome of elections, as Nigel Farage. Fewer have done so while failing to win office. In seven attempts at standing for a seat in the UK House of Commons between 1994 and 2015, the votes to get him across the line have failed to materialise. Yet it is impossible to imagine the Brexit referendum of 2016, or the victory of the Conservatives under Boris Johnson in 2019, as being possible without his manipulative hand.
Before an audience at the MF Club Health and Wealth Summit at the Tiverton Hotel in March, Farage had words for his country’s voting system, one that notoriously remains stubbornly rooted to the “first past the post” model. It was a system that had, in his view, eliminated any coherent distinction between the major parties. They had become “big state, high tax social democrats”.
Farage took the budget as a salient illustration. The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, agreed “with virtually everything in the budget. It would’ve made no difference if Rachel Reeves had delivered that budget instead of Jeremy Hunt. They are all the same.”
Having been made leader of the populist Reform UK party for the next five years, Farage felt it was time to make another tilt. On June 3, he announced that he would be standing in the July 4 election in the Essex constituency of Clacton, one that had conclusively voted to leave the European Union in 2016. It is also the only constituency to have ever elected an MP from UKIP, Reform UK’s previous iteration. The decision concluded a prolonged phase of indecision. And it will terrify the Tory strategists.
The speech offered little by way of surprises. The usual dark clouds were present. The failure by both Labour and the Conservatives to halt the tide of immigration. Rates of crushing taxation. General ignorance of Britain’s finest achievements battling tyranny, including a lack of awareness about such glorious events as D-Day. The poor state of public services, including the National Health Service. A state of “moral decline”. Rampant crime. In the UK, one could “go shoplifting and nick up to 200 quid’s worth of kit before anyone is even going to prosecute you.”
From the view of the Conservatives, who already risk electoral annihilation at the polls, Reform UK was always going to be dangerous. Roughly one in four voters who helped inflate Johnson’s numbers in 2019 are considering voting for it. It explains various efforts by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, including his insensibly cruel Rwanda plan, to court a voting base that he hopes will return to the Tory fold.
Unfortunately for the PM, such efforts will hardly matter now that the real Nigel is running. “The pint-loving populist offers a splash of colour in an otherwise grey campaign,” suggests Robert Ford in The Spectator. “The result will be a constant background hum of populist criticism undermining Tory promises and reinforcing voters’ doubts.”
Veteran British commentator Andrew Marr relished the irony: here was the architect of the Brexit victory bringing calamity to the Conservatives. Farage had effectively raised “the pirate flag of what he calls ‘a political revolt’ against the entire Westminster class; but in particular against the listing, drifting and battered galleon that is the Tory party.”
Leaving aside – and there is much on that score – the issue of Farage’s Little England image, his presence in the Commons would come with various promises that will rock Britain’s political establishment. There is, for instance, the proposal for electoral reform, one long strangled and smothered in the cot by the main parties. Finally, he insists, a proportional representation model of voting can be introduced that will make Westminster more representative.
He also proposes ridding Britain of the House of Lords in its current form, replacing it with what would essentially make it an elected chamber accountable to voters. This “abomination” and “disgrace” of an institution had become the destination for shameless political hacks favoured by Labor and Tory prime ministers. “It’s now made up of hundreds of mates of Tony Blair and David Cameron; they’re the same blooming people,” he rattled to the entrepreneurs at the Tiverton Hotel. “They all live within the same three postcodes in West London. They’re not representative of the country in any way at all.”
There is a case to be made for Farage to stay behind the throne of UK politics, influencing matters as sometimes befuddled kingmaker. Even if he fails at this eighth attempt – and given current polling, Reform UK is not on course to win a single seat – there is every chance that he will have a direct say in the way the Conservatives approach matters while in opposition. He might even play the role of a usurping Bolingbroke, taking over the leadership of a party he promises to inflict much harm upon next month. Short of that, he can have first dibs at the selection of a far more reactionary leader from its thinned ranks. The Farage factor will again become hauntingly critical to the gloomy fate of British politics.
Inexplicable Investments: Elbit Systems and
Australia’s Future Fund
by Binoy Kampmark / June 4th, 2024
Australia’s modest sovereign wealth fund, modestly standing at A$272.3 billion, has crawled into some trouble of late. Investors, morally twinged, are keeping an eye on where the money of the Australian Future Fund goes. Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in the military-industrial complex, a sector that performs on demand.
Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets. In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).
The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom. “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations. That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”
Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment. In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China. Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.
Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation. “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson. The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.
To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers. For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance. Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February. The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design. With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.
And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems? In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published. It included Elbit Systems. An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”. The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”
The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list. The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.
Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”. IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions. As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio. This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”
The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research. Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle. The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them. The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research. Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list. The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list. For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed. The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.
Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught. The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries. “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.” Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?
“We challenge Labour to provide an alternative, coherent & credible economic strategy that radically challenges the current orthodoxy on spending & borrowing so that we can properly fund our industries and public services.”
From the RMT Press Office – Statement on general election 2024.
We are not affiliated to any political party and will back Labour and socialist candidates, it is clear the outcome of the general election will be a Tory-led Government or Labour-led government and that in order to defeat the Tories, Labour has to win.
Over the last fourteen years the Tories have undertaken a sustained attack on working people and our members through anti-union legislation and attacks on terms and conditions. The Tories have also presided over the P&O scandal where they did nothing to protect our members. It is our belief that if the Tories are elected, they will come back with an even more vicious assault on workers’ jobs and conditions, and trade union and employment rights.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “It is objectively in the interests of working people to get the Tories out which means getting a Labour led government in, and our members will need to campaign and vote accordingly.
“Labour is supporting key policies, such as the New Deal for Working People, which includes repealing the 2016 Trade Union Act and Minimum Services legislation. Labour is also supporting public ownership and reintegration of large parts of the railway, removing the ban on publicly owned buses and improving seafarers’ rights.
“However, there will be no blank cheques for Labour and we also challenge Labour to provide an alternative, coherent and credible economic strategy that radically challenges the current orthodoxy on spending and borrowing so that we can properly fund our industries and public services. And alongside the rest of the trade union movement, we are also appalled and condemn the approach the Labour leadership has taken to the conflict in Palestine.
“Protections for our members and the delivery of progressive polices are delivered, as always, by our union and the wider trade union movement being prepared to fight for progressive change. We will continue to fight to protect our members’ jobs and conditions. Our fighting political and industrial approach will continue before the election and after the election.
“A Labour government increases our prospects of successfully fighting to improve our members’ interests.”This was originally published by the RMT on June 5 here.
“An incoming Labour government has to address people’s pay packets. Otherwise, you may see people taking further industrial action.”
By Ben Folley
Ahead of the Labour Party manifesto being finalised at a Clause V meeting on Friday, trades unions in the public sector have been setting out the need for Labour to commit to a restoration of pay, after more than a decade of real terms pay cuts, or face an inevitable new wave of industrial action.
More than a year on from a period of loosely-coordinated mass strikes across a range of public services, which widely secured limited increases in pay deals, the union movement is clear following the most recent TUC Congress, that its demand is for pay restoration following the decline in value since 2010, and will likely have to use its industrial muscle with whichever government of the day to secure a bigger slice of public funds for its members.
The General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Matt Wrack, currently also serving a term as President of the Trades Union Congress, set out his expectation that an incoming Labour Government should recognise the punishment of key public sector workers under the Conservatives pay policies and that staff would not accept below inflation rises from Labour.
Other unions too, have continued to set out their expectation of at least inflation-proofed pay rises, including the British Medical Associations junior doctors who have committed to taking strike action in the election campaign, before polling day.
“Pay stagnated since 2008, particularly for those 14 years it has been under attack, in the public sector.”
“I think Labour will have to address that certainly, I don’t think there will be a mood to accept a year after year of below inflation pay rises, there’s got to be some programme to restore people’s living standards, particularly in the aftermath of the cost of living crisis.
“So I think the unions whether they’re affiliated to Labour or not will be seeking to fo that. That’s what our job is to improve the living standards and rights of our members. And I think we will be pursuing that very forcefully, whoever’s in government after after July.”
“An incoming Labour government has to take account of the fact that people have struggled over 14 years, particularly on the back of the cost of living crisis. Something has got to be done to address that in people’s pay packets.”
“I get that they’re going to be under financial constraints and so on, but something will need to be done about it. Otherwise, you may see people taking further industrial action.”
Elsewhere Unite the Union’s General Secretary, Sharon Graham, took a swipe at the Labour leadership for changes to the New Deal for Working People previously agreed between the party leadership and the trades unions.
Drafted by Andy McDonald and launched by Angela Rayner at Labour’s 2021 party conference in Brighton, aspects of the agreement have come under threat, including the single status of worker and the scope of collective bargaining proposals which it had been proposed would be brought in across a range of sectors under the title of Fair Pay Agreements, but the commitment to which has seemingly since been reduced to a consultation on introducing one solely in the care sector.
“look at the planned introduction of sectoral bargaining, which is now on life support. Limited to one sector and lacking any sort of clarity as to whether actual negotiations on issues such as pay will take place, this important policy will without doubt be watered down still further as part of the much-trumpeted “consultation”. If collective bargaining is not restored to a respectable level, the new deal will not deliver real change for workers where it matters, in their pockets.”
Concluding, she wrote,
“yes, vote Labour. But do it with your eyes wide open and don’t be afraid to push for more from a party built to be the workers’ voice.”
Unite will be represented at tomorrow’s Clause V manifesto meeting.
Elsewhere, the National Education Union launched their Manifesto for Education, with a key demand of ‘Make teacher pay competitive to fix recruitment crisis’.
“all government decisions, including a response to the recommendations, will need to be carefully considered in light of the sensitivity of the pre-election period”.
“The government will publish its response in due course, but will not be able to do so during the pre-election period.”
This has prompted outrage from teaching unions who condemned the late initiation of the pay review process.
In hospitals too, health unions have condemned the late running of their own pay award process.
“The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and Trade Union Act 2016 to be revoked, every section, without exception.”
The first leader’s debate of the election saw RMT union general secretary Mick Lynch on Newsnight to discuss the content, where he said of Starmer, “He needs to come to the country with a bolder message.”
“It is objectively in the interests of working people to get the Tories out which means getting a Labour led government in, and our members will need to campaign and vote accordingly.
“However, there will be no blank cheques for Labour and we also challenge Labour to provide an alternative, coherent and credible economic strategy that radically challenges the current orthodoxy on spending and borrowing so that we can properly fund our industries and public services.
“Protections for our members and the delivery of progressive polices are delivered, as always, by our union and the wider trade union movement being prepared to fight for progressive change.”
Labour is still expected to commit to the repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) legislation whilst there is a strong demand to repeal the Trade Union Act (2016) and earlier anti-union laws.
But on pay, whilst Labour has condemned the Conservatives failure to ‘make work pay’ whilst remaining silent on it’s public sector pay commitments in the run-in to the General Election, thanks to Rachel Reeves’ self-imposed fiscal rules straitjacket.
Trades unions will be hoping for a clear commitments on pay in Labour’s manifesto but it is likely they will have to pressure an incoming Labour Government to deliver what members are owed.
‘How Labour’s New Deal for Working People will strengthen trade unions’
Alex Maguire
2nd June, 2024
Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer, as result counts get underway in the 2024 local elections.
Labour quietly released its finalised employment reforms on May 24th – although some parts of it, for instance a single status of worker and sectoral collective bargaining, have been significantly altered since it was first launched in 2021, it should make it significantly easier for trade unions to organise.
This is why, with the limited exception of Unite – which is focussing their criticism on the fire and rehire provisions – the affiliated trade unions are remaining disciplined and supportive of the package. The legislative package, not all of which (particularly the parts covering trade union legislation) will go through a consultation period, does this in three ways: It makes labour a more secure commodity, removes legal prohibitions on trade union activity, and provides unions with more rights.
Making labour more secure
Labour providing full day one rights to all employees means that, contrary to ill-informed reports about probationary periods, employees cannot so easily be dismissed. Equally, providing permanent zero hours workers, plentiful in the NHS and hospitality, with the right to be provided with a contract that guarantees a working pattern reflective of their average work across as 12 week reference period does the same.
The more secure labour is the easier it is to organise. What is more ambiguous is how well Labour’s proposed limitations on ‘fire and rehire’ function. Currently, Labour is proposing to implement a statutory code of conduct that will give employers an obligation to consult with trade unions before deciding to fire and rehire their staff. Failure to follow this code will add worth to any claims of unfair dismissal (which can be brought if an employee is still employed but under different terms) at an employment tribunal.
This differs from Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s proposed bill that amended the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act to oblige employers to share information with trade unions (if they did not then the dismissal was automatically unfair) and gave the central arbitration committee the power to issue an injunction. It remains to be seen if a statutory code has the same effect on employers but is unlikely to deter the more determined ones.
Furthermore, it should be noted that these measures will not affect workers who are ‘self-employed’, meaning that much of the Gig Economy will still be insecure and undermine more secure Labour- as CWU found many of Royal Mail’s competitors have done so.
However, Labour’s other commitments grant unions with more rights of access to workplaces, and it is not impossible to secure recognition with gig economy entities, as GMB have demonstrated with Deliveroo.
Changing anti-union legislation
Labour will make it easier for trade unions to take industrial action and negotiate with employers, by fully reporting the 2016 Trade Union Act, the 2022 Agencies Regulations, and the 2023 Minimum Service Levels Act.
The most significant of these is the 2016 Act, as the other two are still relatively nascent, although ASLEF and the FBU have already had to grapple with the 2023 Act. Repealing this would mean that unions such as UNISON, the RCN, and UCU would find it easier to organise national strike action.
Equally, Labour’s commitment to implementing electronic and workplace balloting means that ballots will be cheaper. Although, as the BMA found out with its referendum on the pay offer for consultant doctors, electronic balloting will not be a silver bullet for reaching disengaged members.
Removing restrictions on industrial action is not about trying to encourage strikes (a practice that different unions have different perspectives on), it is to give trade unions more scope to bargain as they will not have to waste negotiating time by going to painstaking steps to ensure a ballot a and subsequent industrial action is legal in order to avoid sequestration. A more effective measure would be to restore the 1906 immunities that unions were deprived of in 1982; unfortunately, Labour is unlikely to do this.
It is in the spirit of encouraging bargains that Labour has pledged to reform the process for achieving statutory recognition by removing the requirements for unions to demonstrate that at least 50% of the workers in a proposed bargaining unit are likely to support recognition and for a ballot to have a turnout of at least 40% of all workers in the bargaining unit. For an example of how effective this could be, look at GMB’s efforts to gain recognition at Amazon in Coventry.
Giving unions new rights
Labour has also pledged to provide unions with improved rights such as a right of access to the workplace, and more protections and facilities time for lay representatives. This should make it easier for unions to recruit and organise from the ground up, as the union movement is one that depends on shop stewards and the ability to recruit members.
What these rights are is currently undefined, as it is easier for Labour to identify what and how they would repeal than how they would implement something that works. Given the above commitments, there is reason for cautious optimism that Labour will sincerely engage with providing unions with new rights and its agreement to create a single enforcement body with TUC and trade union representation is significant.
Each of these three categories supports and strengthens each other as ultimately they make it easier for trade unions to grow and for workers to advance their collective interests.
Trade union pragmatism means that while the New Deal is far from perfect, the affiliated unions will now back it to the hilt, as they recognise how, if combined with effective and strategic action on their part, it has the potential to be transformative for their movement and reverse decades of decline. Within the comforting confines of labourism, all else is secondary.
