I posted another piece earlier today on the witchhunts of lefties in Unison. There were an awful lot of people at today’s meeting in Bournemouth about these witchhunts - the feeling is that Socialist Party activists are being victimised for so strongly supporting a break with the Labour party.

What was interesting to me was the sheer number of attendees today, and that not all of them where SP members. Far from it. There were a fair few SWP members along - a real development, seeing as it’s been a while since you could have the SWP and SP in the same room without murder being done - but there were also a great many people who belonged to no political party at all. I spoke to a couple of guys from the race equality council in Greenwich, who’d come down for the day just to speak in support of Kas, for example. Others were simply union members who are sick of living in fear of disciplinary action at the hands of the union bureaucracy.

The point is that the Labour link is in many ways neither here nor there in this argument. What union members are finding extremely difficult is the bureaucracy’s heavy-handedness towards people who dare to call for an open discussion on the link and of the union’s funding of the Labour party. It’s a question, quite simply, of a stifling of union democracy.

The point and effectiveness of the Labour link is a discussion that needs to be had in the open, and these attempts to stifle it are causing serious unrest which I would say will cause Labour substantially bigger problems that an open debate about funding would. The unrest and anger at today’s meeting was noticeable, and new in its intensity in my view. I have been attending these sorts of meetings for a while now, and there is no doubt in my mind that they have grown in all ways. I think Unison’s bureaucracy has created a real problem for itself.

I’d be interested in your thoughts and those of other Labour party members and bloggers. Cheers, Kate

Thanks for the response and hope you’re enjoying the conference. My point does, as you point out, apply equally well to Labour supporting people in unions who see the main enemy as the ‘Trots’ rather than the Tories. Feelings about affiliating to Labour run high on both sides, but it is always a shame when there is this much polarisation between people who agree on most things.

The discussion about electing rather than appointing reps is an interesting one (I can think of some advantages and some disadvantages) - look forward to hearing more about it.

I take your point, but I don’t agree with it. I have a lot of evidence now that the New-Labour-tied bureaucracy is acting in an extremely aggressive way towards left-leaning branches - am about to post another piece on it now and will continue to do so during the week.

I do believe the bureaucracy - particularly in the London region is bloated and desperate to keep its connection with New Labour alive at all costs. the ‘bloated’ part rather refers to the fact that those regional officers are unelected and misusing their power (and, as you’ll see from today’s post, desperate to avoid any real debate about introducing elections for officials like themselves. At the moment, as I say, they’re appointed. They use union rules to break local left branches. I’ll expand on that as the week goes on).

I think your point about Labour continuing to offer the better electoral option for people in need has merit - I don’t agree with it myself, but I have interviewed people at conference who most certainly do, and who are furious at left activists who insist that the Labour link must be broken. I talked to a guy from the East Midlands branch yesterday who was incensed to think left activists were going to help the Tories win power by attacking New Labour. I will post his comments soon.

I appreciate your views, and hope that you’ll return to keep commenting on this discussion. I’ve got to run now to get this first post finished for today and then get to the first sessions and meetings for conference, but I’ll come back to address more of the important points you’ve raised.

Best,

Kate

1. I get that there is a faction fight at the moment about whether or not to disaffiliate from Labour and instead build the fifth international or whatever. Heaping abuse on people who work for trade unions like Unison as ‘bloated, overpaid, New Labour-buttkissing bureaucrats’ is just unpleasant. In my experience, the reasons why people work for trade unions is very similar to the reasons why they become union reps, out of a commitment to the aims and ideals of the trade union movement.

2. Every council is different, and even the most progressive will not always agree with Unison 100% of the time. But I was campaigning in a number of different parts of the country in this year’s elections, and in those areas, the way to keep social care homes open, or pay staff decent wages or not sell off playgrounds was to vote Labour.

It just seems weird that you reserve the fiercest criticism for the people who agree with you on most stuff except details of political strategy and affiliation (soft left trade unionists), and don’t have anything to say about the people who have been cutting services most enthusiastically at a local level and are getting ready to smash the public sector trade unions once and forever if they manage to get into power.

The biggest issue that Unison activists have at the moment anyway is their own bureaucracy - anyone on the left is being flattened by the New Labourites in the union who are so desperate to hang onto power (which they won’t - their beloved Gordon Brown is cruising for one of the all time hidings next election). It’s an absolute shambles and I’ll be publishing more about it.

The campaigning tends to be at the behest of members - they ask the union to campaign against privatisation, almos, etc, and the union does have a legal right to participate in campaigning, I think as part of its political fund arrangement.

Regarding commenting on IT - I was asked to do that all the time, because spend on IT consultants was always part of proposed restructuring of staff - reorganisation being a procedure that the union’s comments had to be sought on. I had a reasonable knowledge of web/IT and appropriate spending levels, because that was the part of the council I worked in.

You may be implying that there are far-left activists who put a lot of time into ensuring that union branches campaign around issues that are of interest to groups like the SWP. I think that’s a fair point.

Maybe if local activists dropped the random campaigning and focused on representing staff interests (which in the public sector mostly means defending people from bad/bullying management and private sector transfers), they’d have more success and less stressful lives?