Unite general secretary slams Miliband’s capitulation to ‘discredited Blairism’

In what could turn out to be a significant turn of events,
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey fired an angry broadside last week at
Labour leader Ed Miliband, taking issue with Miliband’s recent support for a
public-sector pay-freeze. After twenty years of uncritical support by
trade-union leaders for the right-wing Labour leadership, such a missive is
certainly welcome. It has also helped reopen the debate about the relationship
between the Labour Party and the trade unions.

In what could turn out to be a significant turn of events,
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey fired an angry broadside last week at
Labour leader Ed Miliband, taking issue with Miliband’s recent support for a
public-sector pay-freeze. After twenty years of uncritical support by
trade-union leaders for the right-wing Labour leadership, such a missive is
certainly welcome. It has also helped reopen the debate about the relationship
between the Labour Party and the trade unions.

 

Labour failing to be an opposition

The election of Ed Miliband over his arch-Blairite brother
David was greeted with some enthusiasm amongst the Left in the Party. Like all
reformists, what programme he had was deliberately vague; it contained
progressive-sounding statements, such as, “The Labour party is most effective
when we understand that we are a movement dedicated to transforming our
country. We should be proud of our values of equality, opportunity and responsibility
and we should fight for them.”[1]
Despite this lack of substance, ‘Red Ed’ (as the right-wing press dubbed him)
seemed to represent some sort of break with New Labour and its embrace of the
capitalist, post-Thatcher consensus. Indeed, one of his first significant acts
as Labour leader was to speak at the huge TUC demonstration on March 26^th,
where over half a million workers and their families marched against the Tories
and their programme of cuts.[2]

As we explained at the time, “[Ed Miliband’s] only chance
was to clearly distance himself from New Labour and Blairism. This very much
appealed to the trade union base of the party, where three of the biggest
unions (Unite, Unison and GMB) came out in his support. Their support won the
election for him. Out of the third of the votes in the electoral college held
by the trade unions, 19.6% voted Ed, as against 13.4% for his brother.”[3]

However, we warned that, “Ed was under pressure by his
right-wing supporters to reassure Middle England.” He quickly found himself
completely isolated within the Parliamentary Labour Party, coming under attack
from the likes of Alastair Darling for refusing to explicitly support a
programme of cuts.[4] And he
quickly capitulated. He offered nothing but outright condemnation to the
public-sector workers striking on June 30^th, telling them that “these
strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are going on.”[5]
To the millions of workers who took action on November 30^th, he this
time stopped short of proffering outright condemnation, instead giving a
passable impression of a rabbit caught in the headlights in a futile attempt to
avoid offending the Labour right wing or the ordinary workers.[6]

Labour has utterly failed to function as an
opposition to the Tories and their vicious programme of cuts. By refusing to
support workers as they enter into struggle, they have offered workers nothing
but the blandest parliamentary manoeuvres. And now, Ed Miliband’s latest
intervention suggests he has completely abandoned any pretence of challenging
the Tory cuts consensus:

“[W]hen it comes to the next Labour government, if I was
saying to you: ‘I can absolutely promise to restore this cut or that cut’, you
would say: ‘Well, where is the money going to come for that?’

"This is absolutely responsible opposition. … And it is
absolutely the right thing for us to be doing at this stage of the parliament.
We are absolutely determined that Labour shows we would be fiscally credible in
government.”[7]

Talk of ‘responsible opposition’ and ‘fiscal credibility’
shows his total acceptance that there is no alternative to capitalism, and that
the working class must make ‘sacrifices’ to ensure the capitalist system
continues.

McCluskey goes on the offensive

Ed Miliband’s abandonment of even the weak rhetoric that won
him support has put pressure on the ‘left’ leadership of the trade unions, who
at present are closer to the coal-face. Len McCluskey won the Unite leadership
election promising to “Resource, with other union affiliates, a meaningful
strategy to restore Labour as a progressive and democratic Party of working
people which stands up for the interests of Unite members.”[8]
Now, with the man he supported for Labour Leadership capitulating to the right
wing, McCluskey has been pushed to articulate what many in the Labour Movement
are feeling.

McCluskey sums up the situation succinctly when he points
out that, “Unions in the public sector are bound to unite to oppose the real
pay cuts for public-sector workers over the next year. When we do so, it seems
we will now be fighting the Labour frontbench as well as the government.”[9]

Workers have no choice but to fight a programme of cuts that will turn the
clock back 50 years or more and most are bitterly disappointed that the Labour
leadership is more concerned with showing the capitalist class how ‘responsible’
they are instead of putting up a fight.

Instead, “The political elite that was united in promoting
the City-first deregulation policies that led to the crash is now united in
asserting that ordinary people must pick up the tab for it. It leaves the
country with something like a "national government" consensus where,
as in 1931, the leaders of the three main parties agree on a common agenda of
austerity to get capitalism – be it "good" or "bad" – back on
its feet.” The role of the Labour Party should be to offer political leadership
to the working class in the struggle, not to collude with the capitalists in
attacking the workers!

“Where does this leave the half a million people who joined
the TUC’s march for an alternative last year, and the half of the country at
least who are against the cuts? Disenfranchised.”

This approach will further alienate Labour’s working-class
supporters, McCluskey continues. “And that way lies the destruction of the
Labour party as constituted, as well as certain general election defeat in my
view.” He finishes his piece by placing a demand on the Party, saying, “It is
time for those who want a real alternative centred on investment, job creation
and public intervention to end the slump – and a Labour party that will
articulate that to get organised in parliament and outside.”

 

Reclaiming the Labour Party

The significance of McCluskey’s intervention should not be
underestimated. The New Labour project, which sought to remove all traces of
socialism from Labour and turn it into another capitalist party[10],
only had the success it did because of support from the right-wing trade-union
leaders. Tony Blair’s political programme was heavily reliant on his allies at
the top of the big trade unions, such as the notorious Ken Jackson, whose
proposals included replacing the TUC’s annual conference by a joint meeting
with the bosses’ CBI![11]

So it is refreshing to see trade union leaders standing up
to the Labour right-wing. However, as the millions of workers who have already
gone on strike against the Tory government know, words are not enough – action is
required!

Since the ruling class abandoned the Labour Party leaders and
re-instated their ‘first XI’, funding from wealthy donors to the Labour Party
has collapsed and the Party is now reliant on the trade unions for 90% of its
funding.[12] Unite alone
funded the campaigns of 148 Labour candidates in the last election[13].
At last year’s Labour Party conference, union leaders including McCluskey began
to make noises about putting pressure on these sponsored MPs to support trade
union policies:

“A substantial number know absolutely nothing about trade
unions and their values. We want to re-examine that."

“We are going to set out with our sister unions in Unison
and the GMB because we want people speaking or at least understanding our
values.”[14]

 

We welcome this sentiment, but what is needed is for
McCluskey and the union leadership to articulate how they intend to achieve any
of this. What will such a ‘re‑examination’ lead to? As Marxists, we have always
rejected ultra-left calls for unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and
strip the working class of political representation altogether, but nor will a
few threats force the Labour right-wing to change course. As McCluskey himself
says, what is needed is a strategy to drive these right-wing carpetbaggers out
of the party, and to replace them with a fighting leadership.

If McCluskey and the union leadership are serious about
reclaiming the Labour Party, they must demand that all union-sponsored MPs
publically support workers in struggle. If they refuse, the Union should
instead support the selection campaigns of candidates who will stand up for
working people. Affiliated unions such as Unite have the right to send
delegates to Constituency Labour Party meetings, but rarely are these
delegations filled. The Union must intervene at all levels of the Party, taking
socialist policies to CLPs, and fighting for them.

Then there is the question of the Party leadership. Last
time, Unite refused to support John McDonnell, the one candidate who actually
stood on the socialist platform that McCluskey and the other union leaders are
supposed to support. If the Union had demanded its sponsored MPs nominate
McDonnell, he would have got on the ballot paper and millions of ordinary
workers in the Party and affiliated unions would have been given a real
democratic choice. Ed Milliband is a weak leader, who as McCluskey points out
satisfies neither the workers nor the right-wing. If he is deposed, Unite must
openly back a socialist candidate such as McDonnell, who will fight to make
Labour stand with the victims of this Tory government.

History teaches us that union leaders like McCluskey tend to
move to the left only as a result of pressure from the rank-and-file. During
McCluskey’s own election campaign, it was partly the candidature of
rank-and-file candidate Jerry Hicks that pushed McCluskey to take the left-wing
stance he did.[15] The ongoing
electricians’ dispute is another example of the role played by rank-and-file
organisation in forcing the union officials to take action.[16]
Faced with savage cuts to pay and conditions which initially went unopposed by
the Union officials, electricians around the country organised rank-and-file
protests outside major construction sites. Eventually, the Union was forced to
back the campaign, Len McCluskey himself has now met members of the rank-and-file
committee and promised financial support to the campaign.[17]

So we welcome Len McCluskey’s criticisms of the Labour leadership but
criticism must be matched by action. Workers in Unite must organise at every
level of the Union, from the branch to the NEC, to ensure McCluskey’s call to
‘reclaim the Party’ becomes a reality. Trade union resolutions should be taken
by Unite delegates to Constituency Labour Party meetings, and the General
Secretary should provide union funds to the selection campaigns of socialist
candidates who will fight for working people! Criticism of the Labour
leadership, whilst necessary, is not enough – we need to intervene directly
from bottom to top and turn it into a weapon against the government and its
big business cronies!