YESTERDAY Unite, the trade union with 1.4 million members, announced it will cut political donations to the Labour party and divert the money to union campaigns.
Unite said it would still pay £1 million in affiliation fees to Labour but would divert other funds to union causes instead of funnelling it into the Labour Party.
This represents the beginning of a huge shift, forced by the working class, away from bankrupt social democracy, and a blow to the extreme right wing Labour leadership of former state prosecutor Keir Starmer.
It comes after the Bakers’ union (BFAWU), which was one of the first unions to help to set up the Labour Party in 1902, disaffiliated from the Labour Party at the end of September and walked out of the Labour Party conference.
Andy McDonald MP, resigned as shadow Employment Rights Secretary during that conference after being asked to reject a £15-an-hour minimum wage. Labour members voted for the motion and Starmer responded stating that the leadership was not mandated to carry out what the conference voted for.
Three weeks ago the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted at its special conference to suspend any donations to the national Labour Party outside of affiliation fees. Commenting on the motion that passed with 94% support, CWU leader Dave Ward said: ‘The current Labour leadership is failing to connect with working-class communities.’
These are big changes and show how far the Labour leadership have lurched to the right and how angry the working class is that the Party, created by the working class to carry out its interests in Parliament is now getting closer and closer to the Tories.
In fact, Starmer has just completed yet another purge of the Party leadership of anyone who has any affiliation to ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, someone that Starmer went out of his way to witchhunt. Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party in October 2020 on trumped up charges of ‘anti-Semitism’.
On 31 October 2020, the general secretaries of seven of Labour’s affiliated trade unions (CWU, FBU, NUM, Unite, BFAWU, ASLEF and TSSA) published a joint statement calling the suspension ‘ill-advised and unjust’.
There is no doubt that Starmer is clearing the decks in preparation to form a national coalition with Johnson’s Tories to try to save UK capitalism at the expense of the working class. Starmer has on countless occasions declared that MPs must ‘put their differences aside and work in the national interest’. All talk of ‘national interest’ is a betrayal, and a stab in the back for the entire working class.
There are no ‘national interests’ there are only the class interests of the two major classes, the ruling class and the working class. The Tories represent the interests of the ruling class of bankers and bosses. Labour MPs must now be forced to represent the interests of the working class by the trade unions using their huge economic and political power to make them do it.
Labour MPs have however already disgraced themselves with their nodding through legislation to make Hamas and the Palestinian struggle illegal.
On the burning issue of criminalising Hamas and support for Hamas, not a single MP from any party in Parliament opposed the extension to the Terrorism Act to include Hamas on the list of ‘terrorist organisations’. If even one MP had stood up against this, it would have forced a vote. Cowardly Labour MPs were frightened of being seen voting to stab the Palestinians in the back, this is where the nodding through came from!
Now being a member of Hamas, or supporting Hamas by waving a Hamas flag can land you with 14-years in jail.
This Labour leadership and the whole of Parliament are a disgrace. They clearly need a ‘hand’ or a huge push from the working class to even think of doing the right thing.
The trade unions must take decisive action. They must organise a general strike to defend the interests of the UK workers and the oppressed nations like the Palestinians by bringing the Tories down and by bringing in a workers government and socialism.
This is the only way forward. Trade unionists must join the WRP and organise the British socialist revolution, to change the UK and the world for the better clearing the way for smashing capitalism worldwide and bringing in a world socialist republic. This is the way forward!
