Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left – Join the Conversation

by Keith Richmond

UNITE deputy general secretary Jack Dromey has hit back at David Cameron’s attempt to cap trade union donations to the Labour Party.

In a bid to break the historic link between the party and the unions, and to impoverish Labour as a political organisation, the Tory leader is demanding a cap on contributions from trade unions to the party of £50,000 a year.

Mr Dromey, who is also treasurer of the Labour Party, is furious at Mr Cameron’s interference.

He said: “The link between the trade unions and Labour is 100 years old. The bigotry of the Tories goes back centuries.

“Trade union members donate in their millions to support the Labour Party and trade union funding is the cleanest in Europe.”

Unison said it was hypocritical of Mr Cameron to attack the trade unions when he had accepted a £2.5 million war chest from the Conservative peer and offshore banking
multi-millionaire, Michael Ashcroft.

A spokesperson said: “It is spending on political campaigning, not donations, that causes an ‘arms race’ at election time. Unison believes a better system would be clear spending caps, both national and local, patrolled by the Electoral Commission on an annual basis.”

In an opportunistic move, the Conservative Party leader wrote to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, threatening to walk out of talks on the future funding of political parties unless a cap on donations is applied right across the board.

Mr Cameron said: “I don’t like the extension of the state funding of political parties and it cannot be justified unless we have limits and unless those limits apply right across the board.

“If those limits are not going to apply properly to trade unions, then I don’t really see any justification for an extension of state funding.

“We need to know from the Prime Minister – are you prepared to break the link with the trade unions and apply those £50,000 or other limits to trade unions?

“If so, the negotiations can continue. If not, I see little point in this.”

Mr Cameron also said he was not in favour of a spending cap between elections – a move Mr Brown is planning to neuter the “Ashcroft effect”, the Tory strategy of piling vast sums of money into a few marginal seats – claiming that the party in power benefited from Whitehall spending.

A Unison spokesperson said: “The Tories are spending Ashcroft’s millions like there is no tomorrow in marginal constituencies to try and buy the next election.

“And Cameron is simply trying to undermine Labour’s affiliated trade union membership funding rather than come up with a fair and equitable system.”