Labour vs the unions? Don’t make me choose

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As this week has been TUC conference week, and party reform rumbles onwards towards conference, Labour’s relationship with the trade unions has understandably returned to the spotlight. And if we’re honest, it’s not a perfect relationship is it?

That’s not the fault of the current leadership of either the Labour Party or the affiliated trade unions. In many ways what we are seeing is just a continuation of a series of events that were set in train decades ago. And it’s a series of events that has continued throughout my lifetime. In short it goes like this – Labour receives significant funding from millions of ordinary people through the trade union movement, Labour feels slightly uncomfortable about union funding and makes point of distancing itself from the unions, unions cry foul, Labour and unions forced to achieve complex compromise that few really understand. Repeat ad nauseum. Cries of betrayal habitually rise from both sides. It often gets messy.

Right now it’s as bad as ever, because the party seems more reliant than usual on the support of the unions, and yet is as uncomfortable as ever with the relationship.

That’s largely because the relationship itself is disfunctional. Let’s be honest – the fact that around 90% of Labour Party funding is from the unions is a problem. Whenever any organisation is bankrolled by a small number of other organisations (or people, like other parties) it’s problematic, because that’s not a stable funding source. But at the moment the Labour Party has singularly failed to either attract big donors or secure significant quantities of small donations. It’s not that the unions have muscled out other donors to the party, it’s just they’re the only ones willing to hand over large sums. It’s not that the unions are ploughing every greater sums into Labour, it’s that there’s so little money coming from anywhere else.

Unless Labour can find vast sums of money from somewhere else, then the unions will continue to be the biggest funders of the Labour Party. So it’s time to stop treating that like a problem, and start realising what a strength the Labour-union link is.

Thanks to our relationship with the trade unions, millions of ordinary working people are plugged into our party. They are, in my experience, more likely to be representative of the country at large – and of Labour voters – than the average party member. The problem is that most trade unionists don’t feel plugged into what we do as a party – so rather than try to push them away, let’s hug them close. Ed Miliband’s plan to engage with trade union members at a local CLP level can reap real dividends – I saw it as a local party organizer at the last election – but that’s only the beginning. But there are other forms of engagement we can try, like (for example) a year’s free membership for affiliated trade unionists.

I’m proud to be a trade unionist. It’s as much a part of my identity as being a party member. I don’t see the two as being distinct either – after all our party was formed by trade unionists. I’m proud of Labour’s links with the trade unions, and I’m proud of LabourList’s links with the trade unions too.

But so many people, both inside and outside of the Labour movement, seem determined to force the choice of Labour vs the unions on us. I hope I’m not alone in saying this isn’t a choice, I couldn’t choose – so don’t make me. Instead, let’s try and find some common ground – and build the fairer society that we all want to see, together.

The alternative is internecine war. I don’t know about you, but I’ve already had enough of that.