THE UNITE union, the largest union donor to the Labour Party, announced this week that it has voted to cut its Labour affiliation by £580,000 or 40% to the union’s funding of the party.
According to a press statement: ‘Unite has made it clear that the actions of Labour against Birmingham bin workers will not continue to be tolerated.’
This week marked the first anniversary of the strike called by Unite members over cuts to pay of up to £8,000 a year which Birmingham’s Labour-run council are attempting to impose on the city’s bin workers.
Throughout the bitter year-long strike, Starmer’s Labour government have backed and encouraged the council’s attack on its workers.
This decision has been taken prior to Unite’s rules conference next year and the union will be consulting its members to see if they want to remain in the Labour Party.
The press statement tore into Labour’s handling of the strike, saying: ‘As streets fill with rubbish in every corner, residents and workers suffer, while the council dither around a deal already scoped out at conciliation service ACAS. A deal blocked by government-backed commissioners on £1,200 a day.’
Insisting that the actions against Birmingham workers ‘will not continue to be tolerated’ the statement concludes: ‘Labour’s incompetent behaviour in Birmingham has come on the back of a failed economic strategy that has left our industrial base fighting for its life.’
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘Unite members are coming to the end of the line as far as Labour is concerned.’
She went on: ‘Workers are scratching their heads asking whose side are Labour on, who do they really represent, because it certainly isn’t workers.’
Graham added: ‘Labour needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The cut in affiliation fee shows the anger of Unite members. Stop taking workers for granted, spine up, do your job and be real Labour.’
It is the trade union leaders who need to ‘wake up’ to the reality of a Starmer government that is entirely dominated by the bosses and bankers, a faithful servant of US imperialism and the genocidal Israeli regime.
The working class have long reached the end of the line as far as Starmer’s government is concerned, as demonstrated by the spectacular defeat of Labour in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Labour’s unwavering support for Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank was demonstrated this week when Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood issued a ban on the Al Quds Day Protest this Sunday, calling it a ‘hate march’ for its support of the Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation.
Meanwhile, at the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday the UK government voted along with all the other imperialist-aligned nations to condemn Iran for the ‘crime’ of retaliating against the US and Israel’s unprovoked and illegal war – a war that saw US missiles killing over 170 schoolchildren on the first day of America’s surprise attack on Iran.
Starmer’s government is silent on all these crimes against humanity while condemning the millions of workers and youth who stand with the Palestinians as ‘antisemites’ along with all those who defend the right of Iran to defend their country from imperialist war.
The Labour government has made it clear where it stands – on the side of a capitalist ruling class that in the midst of a historic world crisis is desperately attempting to make the working class and masses of the world pay for it through class war at home and war against the people of the world.
One thing is clear, cutting off financial support for Labour is little more than a gesture that recognises the enormous hatred of workers towards Starmer’s government and the capitalist system it serves.
The time has come for the trade unions to demand an immediate emergency conference of the TUC to organise the strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down the Labour government, bringing in a workers government and socialism.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British Socialist Revolution.