Those who left the Party Conference thinking it marked New Labour’s dream encounter with the end of history need to book their own wake-up call. We are in for one of the most dynamic and unpredictable periods of post-war history, and there are huge stakes to play for.
Anyone believing that the modernising project had finished with constituencies should have gone to the Labour Co-ordinating Committee fringe meeting. They would have been mildly reassured to learn that constituencies are still the problem. We are too obsessed with “accountability” and “the rules”. So the plan is to develop “best practice guidelines” which CLPs can be set — T-shirt sales, garden parties, fireside membership in virtual reality politics, etc. Those failing to meet the targets would be twinned with neighbouring CLPs which do. Officers from the “good” constituencies would then be sent in to instruct those who are deficient: good behaviour will be rewarded, trouble-makers will be isolated.
The people’s party’s keenness to have CLPs listening to the people is matched only by the desire to know who exactly you might be listening to. Pensioners in pursuit of a decent state pension would be decidedly iffy. Portillo may have discovered an unrequited love for single parents but they aren’t the ones you should be seen with if the outcome is a demand for universal child care rights and a minimum wage of around £5 an hour. And then there’s the question of the unions.
A succession of trade union leaders and delegations had brought their own labour market flexibility to conference: an unbelievable loyalty to Downing Street desires rather than their own union policies. Almost every resolution which might have upset the apple cart of celebrations was remitted after judicious lobbying. Most of this was on the back of threatened defeat by union block votes. It turned Brighton into a conference of “politicus interruptus”: everything of any significance was pulled out before it could come to anything. At the end everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. Assignations across the Conference chamber would not be sullied by unplanned political consequences.
All we heard from the unions was the veiled threat that they could not be taken for granted forever. Many, who had tried unsuccessfully to persuade unions that this year’s demolition job on constituency rights would next year turn onto the union link, viewed such threats with incredulity, like a condemned man threatening revolt from the scaffold. But revolt is in the air and it will face many union leaders with difficult and long overdue choices.
Before Conference began there was a huge march on Sunday in Brighton against low pay, public sector cuts and unemployment. Large numbers of UNISON branches were represented even though union HQ had tried to discourage it. The argument against was that it was simply an SWP stunt designed to embarrass Labour. Many of the branches represented on the march understood the SWP involvement and had no time for the sectarianism and opportunism of their politics. But they turned up to make their point about absolute opposition to further public sector cuts. How else was absolute opposition to be expressed?
This is the trade unions’ dilemma and it goes far beyond UNISON and the public sector. The base of the post-election labour movement will move significantly to the left. Union leaders looking for re-election will not find it by being loyal to Tory spending limits. Leaders looking for credibility will not grasp it in adherence to a minimum wage policy which excludes the under-25’s, or which merely swaps poverty in work for poverty on the dole.
The choice facing today’s union leaders is simply this: do you support the revival of the Labour left or the anti-Labour left? Freeze out the Labour left and the anti-Labour left will screw you anyway. There has always been an agenda for a post-Labour political configuration. Undermining the trade union link only hurries this along. Siding with the Labour left would help defend the link. It would also entail a political repositioning of the unions themselves: supporting progressive taxation, redistributive spending, common ownership — rather than competitive deregulations; common entitlements (to free health care, education and a restored state pension) — rather than the pursuit of individualised welfare packages.
Labour may have taken the decision to keep politics out of its own future conferences. But there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance that the unions can do the same. Perhaps this is the key link that CLPs (and a whole host of campaigning organisations) need to reconstruct.
Brighton 97 may yet turn out to be the point which triggered the emergence of a new generation of trade union voices, keener to be fighting on the beaches than strolling on them. That’s where we will find “best practice guidelines” with a difference.