THE RULES conference of Unite, the largest union donor to the Labour Party, yesterday voted to reject a motion calling to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.
Speaking in the debate, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham told delegates: ‘This is the moment of maximum leverage for the union where we can hold Labour to account. Now cannot be the time to walk away. We would be weakening our arm.’
Graham went on: ‘It would be the worst time to leave the Labour Party when they are in touching distance of power, if we leave we wouldn’t influence that power.’
She concluded: ‘Labour must be Labour and the union must push them into that position. We must make them take different choices. We will not make the same mistakes of the past, there will be no blank cheques for Labour until we see tangible results.’
In fact, Graham has handed the right-wing Labour leadership of Sir Keir Starmer a complete blank cheque to continue with his move to make the Labour Party an acceptable party in any government of National Salvation that emerges from the wreckage of the Tory government.
Graham talks about ‘maximum leverage’ and holding Labour to account when Starmer is running a campaign of total support for every Tory attack on workers’ wages and the rights of trade unions to take strike action.
She completely, and dishonestly, obliterates from her speech any criticism of Starmer, who has been groomed by the capitalist state for decades as the man to head up a government of crisis that is prepared to take on and defeat a powerful working class movement.
In his role as head of the Public Prosecution service (DPP) Starmer was complicit in the prosecution of and fast-tracking the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States.
Since his elevation to leader of the Labour Party, Starmer has made no secret of his slavish devotion to the bosses and bankers and the capitalist state and his intention to turn Labour into the party of business.
Banning his MPs from attending picket lines and showing support for workers striking over pay, has been the constant theme of Starmer who has joined with the Tories in denouncing as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unaffordable’ pay demands by nurses and doctors, while pledging any future Labour government to increasing the privatisation of the NHS.
While Starmer has only increased his attacks on workers, Graham has rowed back on her previous criticism of him and the Labour Party.
In August last year, Graham told the Observer newspaper that Labour was becoming ‘irrelevant to workers’ and it was hard to justify handing the party millions in funding.
She accused Starmer of sticking two fingers up at workers after he sacked Labour MP Sam Tarry from the shadow cabinet for joining a BT workers picket line and making a statement that workers deserved a pay rise to match inflation. In the same interview, Graham came out firmly opposed to the growing demand from workers for a general strike.
Today, with the crisis of British capitalism swamping any hope held by the trade union bureaucracy that there can be any peaceful compromise between bankrupt capitalism and the working class, Graham is ditching even any mild criticism of Starmer in an effort to bind the working class to a reactionary Starmer-led emergency government for the salvation of the bosses and bankers.
Graham and the TUC leaders are terrified of the massive strength and determination of workers and young people to fight against being driven into the gutter of mass unemployment and poverty.
While Graham and the TUC see no alternative to Starmer, the powerful working class is today being posed with the need for a new and revolutionary leadership in the trade unions.
The urgent task is for the development of a leadership prepared to organise the massive strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down this crumbling Tory government and bring in a workers’ government and socialism through expropriating the bosses and bankers.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists fight for this revolutionary programme – join today.
