Keith Norman warns that Labour is doomed without an agenda to promote the interests of ordinary people
LABOUR has no future without the trade unions. And “new” Labour has no future – period. Revenues from union members prepared to pay the political levy are falling and they will not increase until this Government adopts a progressive agenda that accurately reflects the concerns and aspirations of the ordinary people who make up our membership and their brothers and sisters in the trade union movement.
While Government ministers court captains of industry, we in the trade unions spend our time listening to the fears of people unable to cope with the rising cost of food and fuel, parents whose children are in failing schools and lowly-paid employees worried about losing their jobs. These people are our members and there are many more of them than there are card-carrying members of the Labour Party. If Labour does not change tack – dramatically and soon – they will soon outnumber Labour voters as well.
To retain any realistic chance of securing the support of union members at the next general election, Labour must treat the trade unions as allies, not as a troublesome relative to be tolerated at arm’s length.
Instead of lecturing people on not wasting food, while tucking into huge banquets overseas, ministers must do more to tackle the price of weekly food bills. Before pointing out the deficiencies of other countries’ human rights records, the Government should pay more heed to restoring some of the rights it has removed from its own citizens.
For our members working on the railways and for workers in the public services in general, there is growing concern about wage constraint. It seems that, when the economy is doing well, we cannot be awarded a pay rise in real terms in case we derail economic progress. But if the economy is doing less well, as now, employers plead poverty and it is the workers who suffer.
Labour needs the unions to keep it informed about the very real concerns of ordinary people. In fact, the more remote the party hierarchy becomes from the ordinary workers, the more it needs to rely on us. The worry for Labour is it will become so detached that our members will simply stop caring.
Keith Norman is general secretary of ASLEF
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