Why feed the hand that smites you?
That's the question once again on the minds of more and more trade unionists. The link between key unions and the Labour Party is coming under renewed strain as Blair and his ministers forge ahead with reactionary policies in the teeth of trade union opposition.
The pressure for a change of policy comes not so much from the servile union leaders, who seem to have long ago sacrificed any rudiments of self respect in their subservience to Blair and Gordon Brown, but from angry rank and file public sector trade union members bitter and frustrated at seeing their unions' do nothing to defend jobs, pensions and wages, while still pouring millions in to political fund donations for the Party that has led the attack on them for the last nine years.
Anecdotal evidence of union members resigning from UNISON in protest at its complicity with New Labour combines with actual figures showing that in some areas as few as 5 percent of new UNISON members are opting to pay in to the Affiliated Political Fund which sponsors New Labour.
Perhaps given the onslaught they are enduring it is surprising that even 5 percent of new members want to pay in to the APF: especially since UNISON, uniquely among the major unions also offers an alternative general political fund (GPF), which does not prop up Blair but resources campaigns against cuts, closures and privatisation.
But the discontent is palpable, exacerbated by the grotesque antics of UNISON's Dave Prentis, who took the first opportunity at this year's Labour Conference to express his support for Gordon Brown as Blair's successor, only to sit back tamely as Brown stepped in to squash any possibility of Labour's National Executive supporting UNISON's conference motion on privatisation of the NHS, and a week later announced that funding for NHS pay increases next year will be capped at a level below inflation. He supports UNISON - but no UNISON support for McDonnell
UNISON's policy is now to stake everything on influencing Gordon Brown and his adherents in preparation for the leadership hand-over next year: that's why the union has been simply going through the motions of opposition to policies which threaten UNISON members.
Prentis's determination to deliver UNISON's support to Brown, despite the challenge from John McDonnell, a UNISON member supporting UNISON's policies, also underlines the need to fight for greater democracy and accountability in the political decision making of the major unions.
Other union leaders have been a little smarter than Prentis: GMB leader Paul Kenny, asked recently about his attitude to the so-called 'Warwick agreement' between the unions and Tony Blair before the 2005 general Workers must either build a party to represent their interests as a class or live under the domination of other classes. election, argued that the deal had been a pretty poor compromise - but that the main problem was that so little of it had been implemented.
If the majority of the Warwick agreement has not been carried through by the next election, he warned, there was a strong chance that the GMB would not be supporting the Labour Party in those elections.
Elsewhere different unions are coming at the problem from their own perspective. The RMT - which has been excluded from the Labour Party - recently convened a coner ence or activists from all unions to discuss rebuilding an activist base of shop stewards, but has unfortunately withdrawn its affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party, and has pulled up short of proposing or endorsing any political party that might offer an electoral alternative to Labour in England.
The Fire Brigades Union, too, which broke off its long-standing affiliation to the Labour Party, lacks any clear political alternative.
Breaking from New Labour may be a progressive move, but it may also herald a lurch backwards to apolitical unions which lower their sights to more modest and parochial concerns - leaving political power more firmly entrenched in the hands of the political right wing and the ruling rich.
Workers must either build a party to represent their interests as a class or live under the domination of other classes.
The full progressive potential of a break from New Labour can only be realised if the unions embrace the need to build a new political party that will champion the needs and demands of working people.
The fight on the Labour link would be strengthened in many unions if there were a clear alternative party to which unions could affiliate.
Socialist Resistance believes Respect must establish its credentials and credibility as a key component of such a party: its recent trade union conference with upwards of 600 delegates from a wide range of unions is a positive step in this direction.
If that effort is not to be a flash in the pan, the next few months must see campaigns and initiatives which build on this expanded base in the unions and raise the profile of Respect as a leading, principled element of the left in every trade union.
Ousted by the
Democrat landslide: Bush
says a fond
farewell to
Secretary of
Defence Rumsfeld