Tom Watson’s olive branch to the RMT and FBU

Amid all the fanfare surrounding Ed Miliband being the first Labour leader to attend the Durham Miners Gala for 23 years, it is easy to overlook the content of what was said at the ‘Big Meeting’.

Perhaps the most noteworthy contribution came from Tom Watson MP who said, “we need the RMT and the FBU back inside the Labour Party – a house divided cannot stand”

This was an interesting and conciliatory message to longstanding and deeply political union affiliates that both ended up outside the Party in the Blair years – though in very different circumstances.

The RMT was expelled from the Labour Party in 2004 after it allowed five branches to affiliate to the Scottish Socialist Party, then growing in support across Scotland. The union changed to a pluralistic structure that allowed branches to decide where their funds went.

The RMT executive backed their branches, while supporting national affiliation to Labour, but the Labour NEC ruled it incompatible with Labour affiliation and expelled them (for several years, the RMT continued to send affiliation cheques – which were returned uncashed).

A few months later, FBU conference delegates voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from Labour. This was in the aftermath of the pay strike in which the Labour Fire Service Minister in Scotland described striking firefighters as “fascist bastards”. He ‘quit’ his post after an impromptu meeting with then Scottish leader Jack McConnell. In Westminster, Fire Services Minister Nick Raynsford called the firefighters “criminally irresponsible” – while the FBU accused him of scuppering an eventual pay settlement in 2004.

Despite no longer being affiliated both the RMT and FBU have retained an engagement with Labour. The RMT’s parliamentary group comprises numerous Labour MPs and is chaired by John McDonnell. The FBU only permits Labour politicians to join its group which, until he lost his seat in the 2010 election, was chaired by Andrew Dismore (now a London Assembly Member).

Both unions funded several Labour candidates at the 2010 general election, but reaffiliation did not appear any closer under Gordon Brown.

Perhaps, Maria Eagle’s public consideration of renationalising the railways – which remains Labour conference policy (ironically passed in 2004, just after the RMT was expelled) – can demonstrate Labour has changed. This popular policy may help bring another affiliate back on board.

Both the FBU and RMT are among six unions affiliated to the LRC – the largest organisation on the left of the party – an organisation that is constitutionally committed to the election of a Labour government and to encouraging those who have left the party to rejoin.

Nevertheless, both sides still wear the scars of the last decade. There will be those in the party who will want to distance themselves from more militant unions, and there are inevitably those in the RMT and FBU membership who have little faith in a party that disowned and insulted them. Tom Watson’s comments are therefore a welcome olive branch that Ed needs to follow up.

This week a campaign was launched to re-engage with Labour’s lost ‘five million votes’. This is welcome – and something that the LRC has been encouraging Labour to do for some time. But Tom Watson’s new campaign to re-engage with ‘two affiliates’ is long overdue too. I hope he can convince his cabinet colleagues.

The Labour Party “believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”. The RMT slogan puts that more succinctly: “Unity is strength”. Maybe the time has come for rapprochement.

 Andrew Fisher is joint national secretary of the LRC