STANDING with the ‘One Nation’ Tory slogan behind him, Labour leader Miliband yesterday outlined his intention to wrest the Labour Party completely away from the trade unions and the organised working class that founded it.
He said: ‘I am here today to talk about how we can build a different kind of politics . . . That is what I mean by “One Nation”.’
He continued: ‘We will do so by shaping a Party appropriate for the twenty-first century not the twentieth century in which we were founded. We will represent the national interest.’
This is a joke, since today living standards are being driven back towards that period of history, and will get there once they have privatised the NHS and the Welfare State.
Miliband added: ‘A hundred years ago the trade unions helped found the Labour Party. Decade by decade, from Neil Kinnock to John Smith to Tony Blair, we have been changing that relationship. And now in this generation, we must do so again to build the new politics, we need to do more, not less, to make individual trade union members part of our Party.’
Organised trade unions are to be put out of the party, and only allowed to donate to it – like the situation between the AFL-CIO and the Democrats in the US.
In fact, the trade unions founded, built and financed the Labour Party to advance the cause of the working class, and used their block vote to keep the party from getting into the hands of the ruling class via the antics of middle class careerists who sought to make their political careers out of it.
The case for the working class having that kind of class-based party today is huge, but this time to put an end to capitalism through revolution and not to try to reform it.
Miliband intends to continue from where Blair and Brown left off, to break the link between the organised working class in the trade unions and the Labour Party, and recognise only individual membership by trade unionists. He intends to end the remnants of the block vote that the unions have today, to turn the Labour Party into another US Democratic party.
The new politics ‘involves a diversity of candidates, from all backgrounds, selected in a fair way’ he says. This way turns out to be the introduction of US-type primaries to choose candidates in elections.
He added: ‘We live in a totally different era than when the Labour Party was founded . . . That is why Labour is increasingly becoming a community organisation.’
He continued: ‘Since I became Labour leader, we have opened up our policy making process and opened up the Party to registered supporters. People who do not want to join Labour but share our aims.
‘But I want to go further . . . So I propose for the next London Mayoral election Labour will have a primary for our candidate selection.
‘Any Londoner should be eligible to vote and all they will need to do is to register as a supporter of the Labour Party at any time up to the ballot.
‘And Ray Collins will examine how to pioneer this idea elsewhere too. Such as in future Parliamentary selections where a sitting MP is retiring and where the local party has dwindled, and a primary could make for a more properly representative selection process.’
The Labour Party is to be just another bourgeois party, organising local campaigns governed by the national interest, that is the interests of the bosses.
Today we have a Labour Party leadership that supports the Tory cuts, is pledged not to end them, and is pledged to bring in even more horrendous measures if they become necessary to save capitalism.
This is why he wants the organised trade unions out of the Labour Party. He is freeing the Labour Party from the trade unions all the better to form a national government with the Tories to do what Ramsay MacDonald did in 1931, as the capitalist crisis worsens.
The trade unions must fight Miliband’s plan tooth and nail. They must end all financing of the party till Miliband quits and Labour decides to fight the Tories and their austerity programme instead of, as currently, supporting them.