Dave Prentis says Labour needs to remember its true friends are in the union movement
IT’S an understatement to say that things are not looking good for Gordon Brown and Labour. Opinion polls show Labour at rock bottom; commentators can smell blood and the sharp-suited lobbyists and consultants are now sucking up to the Tories.
As general secretary of the largest public service union, I have to make sure that I plan for the worst, but hope and work for the best. I don’t want to see the Tories back; David Cameron may publicly ooze hoodie-hugging warmth and compassion, but his actions and sly attacks on the unions, the public sector and the vulnerable reveal his true-blue colours.
Of course, some of the Government’s problems are not of its own making. World economic circumstances are buffeting our shores, but the response has hardly been rapid, robust or reassuring.
How the Government handles what is a serious economic downturn across most of Europe and across the globe will determine its fate. OK, blame the global economy, but do something about it. It’s no good saying you feel the pain of the low-paid who are always going to be hit hardest by the huge rises in basic food and fuel. Do something about it. Don’t tell us that i-Pods are cheaper – my members cannot eat i-Pods. And don’t stick to this policy that public sector workers – and they alone – must tighten their belts and make do with below-inflation pay rises.
Government ministers and the sycophants surrounding them need to wake up and smell the coffee. If they have any sense, they will listen carefully to what is said by their friends at the annual TUC Congress in Brighton. These are the friends who will still be there long after big business and the consultants have moved on to their new best friends. When you are a long time in power, you become remote from the people. You need friends like the trade unions to keep you in touch with reality.
The TUC agenda – the agenda of the working people – gives some very broad hints of how to get back on track and still tap into that ideal of fairness, that support for public services which still exists. It’s the agenda that we signed up to in 1997, 2001 and 2005.
Billions of pounds have been pumped into public services to improve them. But that quantum leap forward still eludes us and the Tories are within a whisker of overtaking Labour on its traditional ground. This is probably despite the lack of scrutiny of their policies, not because of it.
Labour should ditch the ideology that the private sector can deliver public services better. It has been hoodwinked by the unrealistic promises of delivery by the big multi-nationals.
There is a role for the private sector in building schools and hospitals and providing drugs – albeit at exorbitant prices. But to move from there to saying the private sector provides healthcare for a profit, teaches our children for a profit and looks after our elderly for a profit, is not what the people of this country want.
A grotesque proportion of taxpayers’ money has ended up in shareholders’ pockets, instead of going into improving frontline services. This is where Labour has lost direction. And it is a huge cause of tension between the Government and the unions.
Low-paid public sector workers, regarded as core Labour supporters, have all the woes of the economy dumped on their shoulders. They are pushed into the private sector, blamed when there are not the huge improvements the Government promised and then blamed for inflation. No wonder they are turning away.
There is not an economist in the land who believes that paying public sector workers properly causes inflation. If the Government wants to control inflation, it should rein in the City speculators who are bidding up the price of oil and food and who awarded themselves £13 billion in bonuses this year.
In stormy times, our Government must protect the vulnerable – and there’s support for that from among working people and the professional classes. There’s an ideal of fairness in our society that Labour tapped into in 1997 and I believe it is still there.
Dave Prentis is general secretary of Unison
