Trade unionists gathered at this year's TUC Conference need to do some hard thinking. The temptation will be to greet the new Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues as conquering heroes. But a realistic assessment of the Government's performance so far will confirm that New Labour in office has given cause for deep concern and long-term anxiety.
Not only has there been no action at all on key long-standing commitments to the trade union movement, including rights at work from day one of employment, there is now an attempt to undermine the newly reinstated union rights at GCHQ with a "no disruption" clause that, it is rumoured, could later be imposed on other public sector workers. Cuts and privatisation continue apace in local government, the health service, and education. One of Tony Blair's closest friends in business, Bob Ayling, has waged a nasty anti-union campaign at BA. Not a finger has been lifted to aid the locked out Liverpool dockers (despite the Government's shareholding in Mersey Docks and Harbour Co.). And the minimum wage looks likely to be set at a level so derisory as to be counter-productive.
Most telling of all, this is the first ever Labour Government which has not immediately raised the levels of welfare benefits on reaching office.
It was insulting enough that Labour's plans for poverty were reduced to an after-thought, unveiled during the summer holidays; worse yet, the Social Exclusion Unit is charged not with spending but with saving money, by streamlining aid to the poor and eliminating alleged duplication. Responding to Roy Hattersley's criticisms, Mandelson (clearly here speaking for Blair) has condemned the idea of "throwing money at poverty". Thus we have the return of one of Thatcher's most outrageous exercises in Orwellian Newspeak. Let's be clear: without increased state spending - on benefits, public services, job creation measures - poverty in this country will continue to claim ever larger numbers of the working class, and plunge them ever deeper into misery and impotence. Having disowned increased spending, the Social Exclusion Unit will be left with only two functions: one, to provide a fig leaf for the Government, and two, to discipline the poor into an acceptance of their place in New Labour's shop-worn excuse for a brave, new world.
The Social Exclusion Unit defines the problem of poverty as a function of the "underclass", an alienated minority trapped in a cycle of despair and criminality. This sleight of hand shifts the burden of responsibility for poverty away from economic policy and on to the "culture" or even the "moral fibre" of those who suffer it. Trade unionists have a direct interest in rejecting this falsehood. They know that the continuing existence of mass unemployment, and of a large pool of unskilled, casualised labour, dilutes the bargaining power of all workers, and lowers wages and conditions across the board.
Under New Labour's twin disciplines of "welfare reform" and "labour market flexibility", workers of all types and in all sectors will suffer increased insecurity and exploitation. Education and training are held up as the only protection against the brute forces of global competitiveness, yet this Government has become the first to introduce university fees. The Tories would not have dared take such a flagrantly reactionary step. Contrary to Government propaganda, fees - which will rise well beyond the £1,000 mark soon enough - are clearly a disproportionate deterrent to the poor. Providing the broadest and best education for the populace as a whole is the duty of society as a whole, not just of those individuals who may directly benefit from it at some point in the future. "Pay-as-you-learn" is a dangerous precedent: once established in higher education, it will be a more acceptable way of solving the underfunding crisis in further education. If the principles guiding the introduction of university fees are applied elsewhere in the public sector, we will see the end of all universal provision and of all funding from general taxation.
The big lie behind the university fees gambit is that somehow the country can no longer afford to fund higher education. In fact, conversion of some 10% of current military spending would cover the long term shortfall in university funding, as would the rescinding of Gordon Brown's 2% cut in corporation tax, not to mention a modest increase in the top rate of personal income tax.
Under New Labour's current policies, the poor will get poorer, and more numerous, while the rich will get richer, and more powerful. Workers and unions will lose even more clout in the workplace while employers run rampant. Eventually, as sure as night follows day, rising unemployment will follow high interest rates and cuts in public spending. It is up to the trade union movement to blow the whistle - sooner rather than later - on a Government which is Labour in name only.