Block votes sel against Labour democracy
Socialist Press1980 1980-09-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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"It could be that this year major changes in the way: the Labour Party conducts its affairs may rest on the decisions of a small number of people"
In these characteristically naive words Labour Weekly sums up the fact that this year, as every year, the bulk of the votes at the Labour Party conference are wielded by a handful of trade union bureaucrats. Out of 7.1 million votes to be cast at the conference, 6.46 million are union block votes.
And while a few unions (UCATT and NUPE in particular) have a specific conference mandate to support long-needed democratic reforms in the Labour Party, most union leaders have succeeded in obtaining policy decisions that enable them-in horse-trading and back stairs deals with the Labour leadership-to take the final decision.
Standing ovation
As shown by the standing ovation for Callaghan's reactionary speech at the TUC Congress, the rightward-moving union bureaucracy is increasingly driven towards an alliance with the Labour right wing against the militant demands of their rank and file membership for action to defeat the Tories.
In the eyes of many union Many victory to the Labour 'left' at the conference Callaghan at TUC Congress would merely encourage workers to place embarrassing demands on the Labour leadership and to intensify the struggle for a socialist alternative to Thatcher's attacks.
The union bureaucrats have no such alternative to offer: and they know all too well that the "alternative economic strategy" peddled by Tony Benn and the Labour 'left' could rapidly be exposed as a threadbare diversion if the Tories were to fall this winter and Labour be office.
This explains the likely line-up of union votes against the proposed democratisation of the election of the Labour leadership and against giving the Party's NEC control over the election manifesto.
Reselection
While many unions are obliged by mandate to vote in favour of the reselection of MPs (a majority of up to 800,000 seems likely) a Labour Weekly Benn-victory receding? survey suggests that a change in
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catapulted, willy nilly, into ises