THE kind of party that Labour Party leader Miliband wants will be no different from the US Democratic Party, if he is allowed to have his way.
The US party leans on the US trade unions, takes millions of dollars off of them in donations, but leaves them powerless as far as determining the policy that the Democratic Party and its president, Obama operate.
After each horrible betrayal by the Democrats all the trade unions have to hold onto is that the Republicans could well have been worse.
There is nothing novel or new in what Miliband is advocating. What is new is that just at the point where more and more US workers are demanding that their unions break with the Democrats and found a Labour Party, Miliband wants to break with Labour’s history and tradition and found a Democratic party.
Behind both developments is the crisis of capitalism and the approach of a socialist revolution, pushing the working class to the left and the Labour Party leaders to the right.
Miliband wants a radical party, that will not fight to get rid of capitalism but will seek to make its most bitter pills more palatable for the working class.
The Miliband-Balls axiom is that if the survival of capitalism demands savage cuts, then this is what their policy will be.
This is why they want to get rid of the power of the organised trade unions in the Labour Party, despite the fact that the unions founded, built and still finance it.
Miliband knows that if he can get his measures through, the trade union bureaucracy will adapt to them like pigs do to crap, but with even more enthusiasm, as a way of heading off a revolutionary change.
Currently – under Labour’s electoral college system – MPs and MEPs get a third of the votes to select a new leader, trade unions get a third and party members another third.
That system is to be abolished with every Constituency Party member having a vote. Union members whose union is affiliated to the party will have an inferior ‘supporting membership’ and will have a vote for the Labour Party leader only if they individually apply for it.
To make things more difficult for them, under Labour’s plan, from the end of 2014 new members of unions affiliated to the party would have to opt in and pay a £3 fee to Labour before they got a vote.
Supporting members’ under this apartheid system will not be able to vote for the local Labour leader or for the selection of councillors or MPs. The support of the working class, ‘supporting membership’ is to be kept as a cash cow!
Only MPs will have the sole right to nominate leadership candidates. However a candidate would have to have the support of at least 20% of MPs before he or she could stand – effectively ruling out boat-rockers.
To make sure that only the most determined trade unionist will vote for Labour party leader, all union members will have to ‘double opt-in’ if they want to take part in a leadership contest. They have to say that they are content to give money to Labour and that they want to become ‘an affiliated supporter’.
London’s Labour mayoral candidate is to be selected in the same way as the party leader.
The new leadership rules will be put in place this year – but changes to the party’s funding will be phased in over five years.
Describing the changes as ‘massive’, Miliband acknowledged they could mean donations to the party falling.
Perhaps he intends to bring in a state subsidy for the major political parties, to do away with the need for any working class support at all.
Trade union leaders must be made to speak up for their members and for the working class as a whole. They must spell it out to Miliband that they will split with the Labour Party if he pushes these measures through and stand candidates against Labour candidates who will not support the socialist policies of the trade unions.
Meanwhile, until the matter is settled in their favour, the unions should not pay another penny over to the Labour Party.
