By Steve McKenzie, UNITE Community member
This is the second part of a two part article. Part 1 can be found here.
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At a certain stage, when it has become clear that the Labour government is not delivering any meaningful reforms, Sir Keir Starmer and his supporters will find themselves in conflict with the working class.
How could it be any other way? Sir Keir Starmer has made it abundantly clear that his Labour party is business friendly. Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has informed the finance industry how she would “unashamedly champion ” them. That means that Labour will not be championing the needs of the working class.
You can’t serve the interests of the ruling elite and the working class at the same time
It is not possible for any leadership of the Labour Party, in any historical epoch, to serve both the interests of the ruling elite and the working class. A hundred years ago the British ruling elite was made up of mainly the manufacturing and productive bourgeoisie: the owners of mines, shipbuilders and manufacturing industry.
Although the back of Great Britain had been broken in the first imperialist war, this country was still seen by many as the worlds number one superpower. (The reality was that it was a rapidly declining superpower and the United States was the rapidly emerging new world superpower).
Today, a hundred years later, the ruling elite in Britain are mocked by some, who refer to them as the kleptocracy. Many a true word said in jest. To a large extent the former industrialists have been replaced by a financial oligarchy, speculators, stock market spivs, trading in futures, property thieves and bankers, a conglomeration of financiers of a most degenerate nature. Parasites of this type have always been there, but they have never held such a dominant position before.
The role of Britain internationally
At an international level, Britain is now no more than a bag handler for the US. America says “jump” and the British political elite says “how high?” The same obedience can be seen in relation to the financial elite. The kleptocracy pull the strings and play the music, that our bought-and-paid-for politicians sing and dance to.
It is blatantly obvious that Labour cannot serve the interests of this financial elite, and the working class.
We only have to take a cursory glance at one or two of the main issues.
Protecting the NHS and local services
Ordinary working people want to see a significant improvement in the NHS. This would involve debt cancellation, and bringing services back in house. Building more hospitals, improving existing ones. Employing more staff. Paying doctors, nurses and other health workers the real rate for the job.
Exactly the same goes for education, social care, local government and any other vital services you care to mention, that ordinary working people rely on.
The spiv’s and privateers who run the show, see the NHS and all other public services as nothing more than a cash cow to gouge a profit out of. Bankers and others make billions in interest charges on hospitals, schools and roads and bridges, that were built under schemes like the Private Finance Initiative. Any real improvements in the NHS and other public services will have a hugely detrimental effect on big businesses ability to exploit them.
Any other reforms that will benefit working people, like an increase in the minimum wage, strengthening employment rights and repealing anti union legislation, will be fiercely opposed by the ruling elite.
A turn to the industrial front
When the inevitable confrontation comes, union members will look for a lead from the top of the trade union movement. Inevitably, and in many cases, this will lead to bitter disappointment.
While some trade union leaders are better than others, in cannot be denied that on the whole, union bureaucrats on six figure salaries, and gold plated pensions, do not live in the same world as the rest of us, and consequently do not see things the same way as we do.
We only have to cast our minds back a short while, and remember some of the very poor pay offers, that some union leaders were recommending to their members, to end industrial action in the recent strike wave.
Wages and conditions have been attacked for decades
If we cast our minds back a bit further, surely it is a legitimate question to ask, where have our unions been over the last generation, as the health service has been systematically dismantled.
It is surely a legitimate argument, that doctors and nurses shouldn’t have to go on strike. How could things have got this bad? Surely national action should have been called by the TUC and the health service unions to defend the NHS.
There hasn’t even been a national demonstration as the Tories have privatised and systematically dismantled the health service.
The union is its members – the members are the union
To put our hopes of an industrial resolution to our problems, in the current crop of union leaders, (Mick Lynch and one or two others aside), is as naive as expecting a political solution from Sir Keir, Rachel Reeves and their hangers on.
The union is its members and not the bureaucrats it employs. There is an old saying, ‘just because you are employed by a trade union, it doesn’t make you a trade unionist’.
As members we must be aware of this, and there is an urgent need to get ourselves organised and democratise our trade unions. For far too long the tail has been wagging the dog. Unelected and barely elected trade union officials have been calling the shots.
The shortcomings of many of these trade union leaders has always been a factor. There are one or two prime examples in history.
The trade union leaders fail their members
Over a century ago, in the first world war at least two union general secretaries, (one of who was a Marxist in his younger days), held honorary positions in the British army. They helped the establishment to recruit young working class men into the army, who were then sent to their deaths on the western front.
After the war this raft of trade union leaders first betrayed the miners, and then the general strike. Their privileged lifestyle, and the flattery of the of the aristocracy had changed them.
In the early days of the growing labour movement, the astuteness and cynical approach of the ruling elite is shown in the words of the aristocratic Lady Dorothy Nevill in a conversation she had with Hendry Hyndman, leader of the Social Democratic Federation:
“You will educate some of the working class, that is all you can hope to do for them. And when you have educated them we shall buy them, or, if we don’t, the Liberals will, and that will be just the same for you.”
Do not let history repeat itself
We do not want to see history repeating itself, forewarned is forearmed, we should get ourselves organised in shop stewards committees and broad lefts. We need to build democratic unions where new and existing genuine fighters can win support and ultimately leadership positions, to replace the current union leaders who fail to measure up to the task.
