Labour-backed strikes? Not in my name

How do you explain the fact that ALL the leadership contenders for the post in Scotland – including Tom Harris, who would not object to being called to being on the right of the party – have backed the strikes. Without hesitation. 

If the cause is just and honourable…..

I’m not sure who Alex White even is, or how he comes to the conclusion that he speaks for anyone other than himself? But let’s look at his closing remark – a party for many not the few. Well, over the last few weeks we have heard the many speak. Hundreds of thousands of votes, from school crossing patrol staff, home carers, nurses, refuse workers, head teachers, radioigraphers, physiotherapists, senior civil servants and the lowest paid cleaners, all taking the decision to vote for a strike to show that they have had enough. We are striking to defend a pensions deal reached by the last Labour Government, and we expected the Shadow Cabinet to speak out and defend that deal, which so far hasn’t happened. To defend a deal which had mechanisms to ensure affordability into the future in schemes which see billions more being paid in than paid out, meaning that the 3.2% increase in contributions will effectively be a tax on public sector workers, where thousands are losing jobs and seeing pay frozen.

But even setting aside why it appears so difficult for the Shadow Cabinet to defend a deal they did, let’s look at the strike itself. I work for UNISON, we balloted 1.1m members. Or ‘the many’ as you might say. We didn’t do this on the whim of a General Secretary, we did it because nearly 2000 delegates voted unanimously for a ballot. All of those delegates are public sector workers, who knew all too well what striking would mean. In the ballot, (with a turn out equivalent to most council elections, or does Mr White want to question the legitimacy of Labour Groups?) 250ooo UNISON members voted for strike action. Quarter of a million. Anyone care to remind me what the membership of the party is these days? And we know that in every ballot of this kind, our members will support the action, even if they voted No, even if they didn’t vote, because they want a strong union and they belong to be part of one. And our membership applications are at unprecedented levels – a sign that even those who weren’t in the union support our action.

And aside from the current pensions dispute, aside from the strike ballot, sometimes this is just about whose side are you on? And our members want to knew whose side the Labour Leadership are on. We have had huge levels of support from Labour parties up and down the country, Labour Groups have voted in support of the trade union members taking action. And against a hostile and vitriolic media and a vicious Government , it is appalling that this author chose to attack us or that Labour List chose to post it.

Ultimately, we don’t need the support or approval of the Labour Leadership and November 30 will be about 2.5m taking action in defence of pensions and the whole trade union movement uniting against an austerity programme which is devastating lives and damaging the economy. It is an opportunity for the Labour Leader to show whose side he is on, to show support for unions that placed their fait in him and will see silence, ambivalence or opposition as nothing more than a betrayal of that trust

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNsrK6P9QvI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Fatuous and facile nonsense. Presumably this has been written to drive traffic rather than through any serious conviction.

To be fair though Labour has never really formally supported any major strike action in its history. In spite of taking on Murdoch who remains the main anti-trade-union pillar of the establishment, the leadership remains curiously embarrassed of its relationship with millions of levy-paying working people.This is no unsupported pay strike by a small group of workers, or some sort deliberate action. It is a defence of the entire ethos of millions of genuinely hard-working people being paid fairly.

Tactically Labour will miss a trick if it remains ambivalent on the strikes. The action has widespread support from far further than just the “socialist-extremists” and even the worst tabloids are starting to realise this. Crucially it could help bring down this coalition that has no mandate from the electorate whatsoever to engage in the attacks they are now bringing on us.

Also strike action in itself actually gives power back to individuals. It gives people control back, just for a day, of their lives. 

And there is a general rule of thumb – those who criticise industrial action are always politically dodgy.

Firstly, in representative democracy whoever has the majority has a mandate, irrespective of turnout. Now we could argue for changes in the way democracy works, but as it works now the unions have a perfectly valid mandate for strikes. And you also contradict yourself, you say they have as much as a mandate for strikes as Tories have for cuts yet you say the electorate voted for the coalition (so they have a mandate). Please clarify what narrative you are maintaining.

Secondly we are almost totally financially reliant on the unions, so I would say that Labour needs the union several times more than the unions need Labour.

Thirdly, to me. your argument for modernisation seems to me as an argument for improving communication with the unions. The primaries in France opened up the Parti Socialiste to ordinary people, and the unions are made up of ordinary people. In the fourth quarter of 2010, trade union membership was over six million – that is well over the number of people in Labour. Being closer to trade unions would put power in the hands of the many, by shutting them out we are concentrating power in the hands of the few.

To argue that there is no working class in Britain is completely absurd, by doing this you are alienating people who work hard and who we claim to represent.

This is an odd, nonsensical piece.

I’d to like a response but I’m just too angry and disappointed with the article to be able to string together even a single sentence.

That polling in full: YouGov for the Sunday Times – On the strikes, 50% opposed headteachers taking stike action (38% supported it), 49% opposed teachers taking strike action (41% supported), 51% opposed civil servants taking strike action (39% supported). Turning to Ed Miliband, YouGov asked if people thought he should support or oppose the strikes – 23% think he should support them, 33% oppose them, 27% neither.

Meanwhile YouGov earlier this month  found people thought public sector workers should pay more into their pensions (by 51% to 35%), agreed with linking pensions to average salary rather than final salary (by 49% to 30%), but just opposed  increasing retirement age (44% thought this was right, 45% wrong).

Ludicrous. We have a government that was voted in on less than that, in terms of the general population. You should be ashamed of yourself – you aren’t Labour, not really.  What are you for, really? When the biggest political awakening of youth in this country is changing the terms of the debate, what are centre right wonks like you contributing? Bankrupt and irrelevant. Give me a reason to vote for you, not mealy mouthed fence-sitting bullshit like this.

You joined a different party because some Labour members are idiots? I think you can see from the comments on this article that these views are not those of a majority of party members.

I for one – a member of a democratic socialist party…

I wonder what bits of democratic socialism Alex actually believes in?

Alex it might be a good idea for you to read a little on the history of the Labour Party. You could start with the formation of the party.

To think Blairites moan when they get accused of being Tories. This article is exactly why!

You are regurgitating Tory propaganda about ballots – ignorant of the fact that there is more mandate for this than say most local councillors have and that we have the most restrictive strike laws in Western Europe already. 

This article shows a complete ignorance to the organisations that to a large extent keep our party financed. There is nothing to gain from expressing the above views unless you are indeed a Tory. To be perfectly honest, if Ed Miliband comes out and makes a defence of the right to strike and the respect that we must have for a DEMOCRATIC ballot, before blaming these strikes on Tory intransigence in the negotiations then he will satisfy most union members that he is on their side without ‘supporting the strike’. It isn’t his decision to make, it is a democratic act – so, I am happy with that line and I’ll be out on the pickets from 7am. 

Somebody
ought to remind Alex White and the rest of the ‘Continuity New
Labour’(CNL) set that the very people they propose to ‘speak for’
were as singularly unimpressed by their anodyne rhetoric last May as
socialists within the Labour Party were. There’s a common
denominator here – the bloodless, insincere, uninspiring, and
rapidly outmoded ‘solutions’ offered by a group of career
politicians and career hangers-on who have nothing to offer the
people of this country but empty bank accounts and empty promises.

For
the strongest indicator of just out of touch ‘centrist extremists’
like Mr White really, you only have to consider his claim that the
role trade union members play in the “Labour leadership contest
system is utterly archaic when clearly union members don’t speak
for the public”. What is so laughable, of course, is White’s
conspicuously absent reference to the fact that around 250 Labour MPs
not only dictated and determined who our candidates would be but then
went on to hold ONE THIRD of the entire vote! Is White seriously
attempting to suggest that our disproportionately public-schooled,
Oxbridge educated, £65,000+ earning, publicly discredited
Parliamentary Labour Party is more representative of the average man
or woman on the street than even the most deluded of trade-unionists?

Labour need Scotland to have any chance of winning power but articles like this are the reason why Labour in Scotland was decimated by the SNP. It the reason why the United Kingdom is in danger of splitting. If  this is the read Labour keep taking then i’m afraid Scotland will stop voting labour completely and if that happens then New Labour Blair acolytes can wail and nash all they like but its only by turning to the left that Labour can win power. We can’t rely on the soft vote of middle England and if we keep pandering to them we’ll lose our core support.