Iraq war, and the lies told by ministers to bludgeon their own MPs into backing the invasion.
But with this year's Trades Union Congress and Labour Party Conference looming on the horizon, the question is whether the new left majority among national trade union leaders - at the centre of which are the so-called "awkward squad" - are prepared to reflect this discontent and step up the political challenge to Blair and New Labour, or whether they will be effectively sidelined into the doomed and sterile exercise of seeking to "reclaim the Labour
As a foretaste of what seems likely to be an autumn of political retreat, the Morning Star, reflecting the political discussions in the Communist Party of Britain, has pulled back from lending support to parties other than itself and Labour, claiming that other organisations [principally the Socialist Alliance in England and the Scottish Socialist Party] "are characterised by antagonism to labour movement unity" (July 4). If rival candidates were to secure trade union support, claims the Star, it would lead to "political incoherence, confusion and powerlessness": some might think that's what we've got right now.
"At a time when the trade unions have never been so united for progressive change," argues the Star, "nothing that undermines the potential for a successful fightback should be contemplated."
However the jury must still be out on how far the union leaders have actually signed up for an agreed programme of "progressive change" - whatever that may be - and how far, if at all, they are prepared to go to secure that change.
What is clear is that this autumn's conference season is likely to resound with calls by union leaders to "reclaim", "reignite", "recapture" and "reinvigorate" a Labour party in which Tony Blair rules the roost, and in which the "Partnership in Power" policies - imposed with trade union connivance - seal off any avenues for democratic accountability.
Trade unions of course are not, and should not be, political parties: they are inclusive bodies that exist first and foremost to defend and improve the pay and working conditions of their members. Union leaders who rely solely upon political speeches rather than screwing concessions from employers will always be living dangerously.
But at a time of growing political B frustration, in which many union
members are increasingly convinced that the leaders of the party their subscriptions continue to support is hellbent on kicking them in the teeth, we might reasonably expect the union leaders to reflect a little more of that anger - and to be threatening a little more in the way of retribution if Blair's government continues along its present path.
Instead most union leaders focused upon heading off calls for the democratisation of unions' political funds, and even resisting calls for the scaling down of contributions to Labour in the absence of any sign that the Party's leadership pay any heed to the unions that support them.
It is quite reasonable for union members to expect their organisations, and leaders elected largely because they have separated themselves politically from Blair and New Labour, to be challenging the government's catalogue of high-profile failures and betrayals - and demanding a change.
The transport system lurches from one crisis to the next, connected only by a change of excuses. Improvements in one section of the health service or school system are immediately revealed as having been achieved at the expense of new cuts and chaos elsewhere: hospitals run out of nurses, while their budgets are milked to pay for NHS operations in private hospitals. Schools have to choose between repairing buildings and hiring teachers.
There are other issues, too, which focus popular anger against a New Labour govemment that has revamped and rebranded the neo-liberal privatisation agenda of the Tories, while presiding over a massive widening of the gulf between rich and poor.
These and similar discontents reach deep into the trade unions. Union members, especially those in unions affiliated to the Labour Party, are painfully aware that the government has not only failed to deliver for them, but that Blair is more concerned to court the support of Bush, Berlusconi and other right wing governments abroad, and Rupert Murdoch and a handful of big employers and multi-millionaires at home than he is to listen to the views and policies of the trade unions which provide the Party's core funding.
Anyone doubting the Blair government's hostility to the unions and Leagerness to bite the hand that funds it simply needs to look back to the way they treated the fire fighters. Prescott's threats to bring in new legislation specifically to smash the fire fighters' pay campaign made it crystal clear that for ministers the priority was to pick off and defeat a well-organised and popular group of workers - as a deterrent to any future national-level challenge.
But the FBU strikes were also the first national level test of Andy Gilchrist, widely touted as a core member of the so-called "awkward squad" of union leaders: it was a test that Gilchrist and the FBU leadership failed. Despite a strong rhetorical fight, and a massive mandate for action, when the chips were down Gilchrist and his executive took the first opportunity to get the strikes called off, and progressively distanced themselves from the 630k claim that had
Encouraged by this, Post Office employers are now taking a similarly uncompromising line against demands by the CWU for a decent pay increase. In terms echoing the local government employers' side in the fire fighters' dispute, postal workers are being offered a minimal two-stage pay rise, with any extra conditional on job-cutting "modernisation" of this nationalised industry.
It is a measure of how cautious many union leaders have been that the most devastating evidence of the latent power of trade union members came through the unofficial action of BA check-in staff at Heathrow airport - a show of strength which paralysed the airline for days, but which triggered frantic efforts by officials from all three main airport unions - GMB, T&G and Amicus - to push through a settlement.
Each of these unions has seen a selfproclaimed anti-New Labour
General Secretary take office, with the T&G's Tony Woodley going so far as to claim to be a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad, even if few people can remember him being very awkward with the employers.
But their limited willingness to fight the employers is matched by a reluctance to go beyond bluff and bluster in fighting Labour policies. While the GMB two years ago voted to cut its contributions to the party and to spend much of that money promot ing campaigning work, this has been sharply reined back since new General Secretary Kevin Curran took over from John Edmonds.
Curran, has opposed privatisation and PFI, but also coined the recent bizarre call for a return of the closed shop - as long as the employers agree!
Tony Woodley hyped up his political differences with T&G rival Jack Dromey, by demanding a f6 an hour minimum wage and the repeal of the anti-union laws: but his criticisms of New Labour revolve entirely around "reclaiming" the Party: he has promised to "put labour back into the Labour Party," and send six T&G activists the direction in which these three, and other union leaders such as UNISON's Dave Prentis appear to be headed is very much towards putting pressure on the Labour Party rather than following the example of the RMT, which this year became the first union to allow its branches to affiliate to other political parties.
Prentis goes so far as to argue that
"Some talk of creating a new trade union political party, but we have one, we created it. It is the Labour Party."
Such abysmal logic leaves open the current line and future direction of the party. We all know where it came from - but it appears that the left general secretaries are some of the most cock-eyed optimists on where it is going.
But while Prentis has always been B well short of a left wing frebrand,
postal workers leader Billy Hayes is one of the original awkward squad - and on the verge of a possible national strike, in which ministers can be expected to wave the big stick as they did against the FBU. Billy has been one of the more prominent trade union supporters of the Stop the War campaign.
So it is possibly even more depressing to find him now preoccupied with the prospects for "reclaiming" the Labour Party, debating the prospects for a 'Constitutiona Commission' (proposed by Amicus leader Derek Simpson) and a "reinvigorated" Annual Conference - which would allow "four contemporary resolutions from trade unions, and four from CLPs". Given the way in which the few critical resolutions that have been passed have been ignored, how much difference could that make?
Hayes, like Prentis, argues that if the unions don't stay in to rescue the Labour Party, the leadership would lurch even further to the right. But like most union leaders he appears to believe that tinkering with the Party structure can prevent this happening
This defeatist, retreating mood among even the best union leaders raises a fresh challenge for the Socialist Alliance and for trade union members who have already concluded that the fight to reform the Labour Party is a lost cause
The Alliance has to show itself capable of winning and mobilising working class support in the workplaces and in local communities, while at the same time it builds a national structure and a political pro gramme that offers a consistent, principled socialist critique of New Labour, and a focus for all those who have broken and are still breaking from the Labour Party.
There is no short-term fix to the historic crisis of leadership that still holds back the British labour movement. But we can res secure in the knowledge that the project to "reclaim the Labour Party" is doomed, and that the best of the forces now embarked on that path can - and must - still be won to the fight for a socialist alternative.
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4 soclalst rest Iraq in revolt stance September 2003 A recent tour by a