Trade Union

By Andy Ford

Voices are currently being raised in Unite, and other unions, against the affiliation of the unions to the Labour Party. But before we walk out of the Labour Party – to who knows where? – maybe we should get our own house in order.

The Unite link with the Labour Party has numerous democratic deficits, deliberately inserted by previous union leaderships to give them control. The system in Unite excludes no fewer than 99% of those members who pay the political levy, and no fewer than 95% of those Unite members who are also members of the Labour Party!

Unite rule 22.6 defines who can take part in the triennial conference that elects a Regional Labour Party Liaison Committee. It is a very restricted franchise: 

“All Branch Constituency Labour Party delegates together with representatives from the Regional Industrial Sector Committees, Area Activist Committees, Regional Equalities Committees and the Regional Committee, who are Labour Party members, shall be entitled to attend triennial Regional Labour Party Liaison Conferences.”

These conferences elect the Regional Labour Party Liaison Committee (RLPC) of around twenty people.

So, the bulk of the delegates to the conference must already be a Unite delegate to a CLP, plus one or two each from various union committees such as the Regional Industrial Committee (RISC), the Area Activists (AAC) and the Regional Committee. The committee delegates are only required to be Labour Party members but the main body of delegates to the conference that elects the committee have to be already accredited by the union as delegates to a constituency. That rule excludes the vast majority of Unite members who have chosen to be Labour party members.

The numbers in more detail

A reasonable estimate is that maybe a million Unite members pay the political levy that funds the link between the union and the Labour Party.

If the proportion of Unite members who are individual Labour Party members is, let us say, eight times the proportion for the general population (which is a generous estimate), then it would still be 4%, of Unite members. This estimate means around 40,000 Unite members are likely to also be Labour Party members.

Of that number, let us suppose that maybe a hundred per region are Unite delegates to Constituency Labour Parties (again a generous estimate). We have ten regions (although one is Ireland, where the British Labour Party is not present). Ten regions, with a hundred CLP delegates per region equates to a thousand Unite members – and this is the number who are eligible to take part in the structure…every 3 years! Out of that one hundred per region, around twenty are elected onto the Regional Labour Party Committee (RLPC).

That means that only approximately 2.5% of our members who are also members of the Labour Party are even eligible to take part in our own political structure! (2.5% is 40,000 divided by 1,000).

What is worse is that this is just 0.1% of the political levy payers.

This exclusionary principle was originally put in place by the right-wing union leaders in the bad old days of the AEEU and EETPU, but the United Left former leadership were just as happy to continue with it. After all, it is easier to control a smaller number of participating members. However, the price of that tactic is the disengagement and disinterest of most members from the structure.

Before we set about quitting the Labour Party, maybe we should open up our own structure. The exclusion of so many members cannot be healthy. Another problem is that there is very little representation of industrial sectors in the Regional Labour Party Committees that are elected every three years.

If the structure was ever audited, we would find whole sectors with no link to the RLPC. Is that what we want? For instance, in Health and Local Government, the political environment is an especially important factor in our members’ working lives. That is also true for steel, aerospace and many other sectors.

Open up the structure! Democratise the link to the Labour Party!

 [Andy Ford is a Unite NEC member for the Health section. A version of this article and other articles and comments can be found on his website, here]