THE Unite union, which in recent years has prevented the Labour Party from going bust and has financed its election campaigns with donations of millions of pounds, is now under a major attack by the leadership of the same party. It is accused of the crime of campaigning to get candidates the trade unions support selected as Labour MPs.
The instigators of this class war against the trade unions are not Miliband, or the Blairites who are playing a major part in it. The instigators are the leaders of the Tory Party, Cameron, Osborne and Co.
Their reasoning cannot be faulted. Since they intend to smash the NHS, the Welfare State and all of the other gains that the working class has made, they naturally also want to destroy the influence that the trade unions have in and on the Labour Party.
Miliband and the rest of his shadow cabinet friends are dancing to Cameron’s tune and, most disgracefully, are attacking the hand that feeds them to satisfy the enemies of the working class.
The Tories would never attack the class that they represent – the bankers and the bosses – but cowardly Labourites who support capitalism are attacking the trade unions.
In fact, in 1903 and after Taff Vale, it was the trade unions that founded and built the Labour Party from 1906 onwards, their vast membership being its base, and the collection of the political levy by the trade unions its lifeline.
All of the ex-Liberals that flocked into it, to become MPs and further their careers, did so knowing that the party was a workers party, financed by the trade unions and controlled by them through the block vote, and politically dominated by Clause 4 of its constitution, advocating the nationalisation of the means of production.
Blair and Brown, in the period up to the 1997 general election, campaigned to greatly weaken the influence of the working class on the party by ending trade union bloc vote control of the Labour Party and getting rid of Clause 4 of the constitution.
Today, with a general election due at any time in the next two years, a new campaign has been opened up.
This time it is in the middle of the greatest ever crisis of the capitalist system. Already, to prove to the bosses that they are ready to run crisis-ridden capitalism, Miliband and Balls have said that they will continue all of the Tory cuts, and bring in bigger cuts if they become necessary.
It is this crisis, and the need of the bourgeoisie to eliminate universal benefits and the Welfare State as a whole, that is driving the political representatives of the ruling class, the Tories, to insist that the Milibands must carry out special measures and a purge of the trade unions inside the Labour Party.
Today there are many references being made to 1931. Among them is the current fall in wages and living standards which is the greatest that has taken place since that year.
1931 is also infamous as the year when Ramsay MacDonald crossed the floor of the House of Commons with a large number of Labour MPs to lead and become the Prime Minister of a National Government that committed many crimes against the working class, including cutting the dole and ushering in the ‘hungry thirties’ – a time that was a living hell for the working class.
Today the economic crisis is much greater, and the cuts that will have to be made in the period ahead, if capitalism is to survive, are much bloodier and greater.
Cameron and Osborne are instigating and egging on the attack on the trade unions inside the Labour Party today because they want to weaken it to the point where it will be ready to join and even lead a national government to save capitalism tomorrow – at the expense of the working class, the majority of the middle class, the youth and the poor.
This is what is happening.
The trade unions are the base of the Labour Party and are its treasury. They must fight and defeat this attack with every resource at their disposal.
Unite and the other unions must tell Miliband to halt this attack at once, otherwise the unions will go on strike financially, and will stand candidates to fight for anti-austerity, socialist policies in all of the constituencies where special measures are used to impose would-be MPs.
They must also demand a recall Labour Party conference to reject all austerity measures and adopt socialist policies to make the capitalist class pay for the crisis and go forward to socialism.
