Len McCluskey loped across the conference floor of TUC headquarters, hand outstretched in greeting, a gentle giant of a man, his substantial frame topped with incongruously impish features and no-nonsense specs. He is surprisingly fleet of foot, but then that might be expected from the man who has just been elected leader of Britain’s largest union.
McCluskey is attending his first national executive meeting as general secretary of Unite – a union he wants to place at the vanguard of an “alliance of resistance” against cuts, after some internal repairs.
We talk about options for the economy, Ed Miliband’s leadership (which he supports), the “neo-liberalism” of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair (whom he compares to Margaret Thatcher), the prospects of the coalition being brought down and why MPs have too much power within the Labour Party. But first there is the important job of forging a new leadership out of the sometimes-uncomfortable merger of Amicus and the T&G into what insiders mockingly dubbed “DisUnite”.
“The main task first of all from an internal point of view is to unite Unite and complete the integration of our two organisations; to start to become focused on how we move forward and express our values and beliefs in a sharper manner. I am looking forward to that, because I know there is a desperate wish among our activists, shop stewards and reps to embrace that unity, that sense of purpose.
“Everyone knows you cannot have two leaders of one organisation, whether that be a trade union or a company or anything else. Contrary to popular belief, Tony [Woodley] and Derek [Simpson] get on fine with each other – they work well together. But they are two strong-willed individuals with two completely different styles and sometimes that has meant that, over a period of time, different signals have been sent out… I think it was always understandable that was going to happen. And I think it was always recognised that, until such time as we got a single general secretary, we would continue to have those type of problems.”
What about the decline in membership?
“Our strategy for growth – our organising strategy – is the only way forward and nobody has yet come up with any different ideas that are credible. Of course, the decline in membership continues because of the type of recession we are going through. Unite is the largest private sector by far and therefore the ravages of the recession have hit us bad – there is no doubt about that. Our organising strategy so far has been successful in the sectors that we have concentrated on, but we have to improve. It has to be better and it has to deliver in a far greater way than it has so far. I said there have sometimes been different signals from the two general secretaries, which has caused confusion. There’ll be no confusion about my absolute commitment to the organising strategy.
“Workers only ever join a trade union if they think it’s relevant to their working life and to their life in general. We have to demonstrate to them that we are an effective union and they should come to seek the kind of protection our organisation gives. Factories are closing left, right and centre, jobs are literally gone.”
McCluskey is articulate, good with words, knocking up a dramatic headline phrase and backing it up with arguments which sound eminently reasonable. So what is this “alliance of resistance”? What does it mean?
“It means exactly that. It means linking together with community organisations, church organisations, with academics and as well with trade unions, to form that resistance. We are facing the most ideological attack on the social architecture since the welfare state was created 60 years ago. So we have to go through the process first of all in exposing what this Government is intending to do, informing our members of the issues and the alternatives, and mobilising in a way that makes politicians sit up and take notice.
“It’s not just good enough to say that cuts are morally and economically wrong. We have to put forward an alternative, because our members have been drip-fed for over 15 months that there is no alternative. At the last general election, all three main political parties put forward a cuts agenda. We’ve got to demonstrate that when a nation is in debt, there are three ways you can deal with that debt. You can have a tax agenda or you can deal with it through tax and economic growth. It is in the concept of tax and economic growth that we should be projecting in a much sharper fashion. We need to be saying that there is no need for this attack on the welfare state and the fabric of society. We need to put the debt into some form of context. There have been periods in our history when the debt has been higher than it currently is. Our debt is not the size of Germany or France, yet there is no slaughter by stealth in terms of a cuts agenda being promoted in the same way in those countries.
“So we have to expose that lie and then we have to put forward our alternatives. That needs to be in the context of raising the consciousness of our members through the deep unfairness of what is taking place. We must also win the intellectual argument for the economic alternative to the cuts agenda. That’s the task before us in the TUC. This is a watershed moment for the TUC and, as the country’s biggest union, we would want to play a central role in that process.”
What does that mean in practice?
“It’s a question of not ruling anything in and not ruling anything out, as far as I’m concerned. We have to raise the consciousness of people. Raising the consciousness of people, exposing what is going to happen will, I believe, tap into the anger that is out there. We need to channel that anger in a way that manifests itself in the most effective way. So I think this is a rolling campaign, raising the consciousness, making certain that the demonstration on March 26 is a huge success, making certain that we play our role in the hundreds of cuts committees that are being formed and seeing where that takes us.
“We can’t run ahead of our members. That would be wrong and make us look foolish. Equally, we can’t lag behind. So the leadership question is one of making sure that the strategy we adopt is correct.”
McCluskey spots where the next question is coming from:
“Yes, on co-ordinated industrial action, I wouldn’t rule anything out. From Unite’s point of view, anybody who wants to engage in a fight to save their livelihood and their jobs and conditions will get 100 per cent support from us, from the leadership. The concept of a wider co-ordinated approach is something we will need to look at and judge, along with our sister unions, as the situation unfolds.”
Does that mean the possibility of bringing down the coalition Government?
“Let me make this absolutely clear. I don’t believe we should indulge in a campaign to bring down the Government. I think that’s a dangerous way to approach this. Our campaign is to mobilise our members and the community so that the government of the day, which has been elected by due process, takes heed of what the people are saying and take a step back from its policies. Like any government in history, if there is sufficient mood and anger among the people, and they don’t take heed of that, they will be responsible for their own destruction. In approaching our campaign, we need to understand that this is a coalition and that there are thousands of decent social democrats who all their lives have been libertarians. From their perspective on the side of fairness and justice, they are horrified at what is happening in their name. We have to exploit that. We have to try to see whether or not such a mood exists in such a way that the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition is forced to re-think their position.”
McCluskey believes that the nearest parallel to the current situation is the poll tax under Margaret Thatcher.
“Here we had a Prime Minister at the height of her powers and yet was brought down by people power because she wouldn’t listen. The truth is that people power brought her down. And the history of our movement and the history of the world tell us that when people power is strong, anything can happen. The Berlin Wall was brought down by people power. So it is the job of leaders to build confidence among workers. When workers are confident enough, anything is possible.
“You can also draw an analogy with Tony Blair and the Iraq war. It was quite astounding to have two million people on the streets of London. That was the beginning of the end for Tony Blair, this darling of New Labour, this darling of the country, if you like, who seemed to have hypnotic powers. It was the beginning of the end, because he refused to recognise that he had stepped too far and gone against the will of the people.
“So yes, I believe there are reasons for us to lock into our principles, values and beliefs and feel confident about what we want to achieve and utilise whatever options we have at our disposal to bring about an effective change of mind and a change of direction.”
Labour leader Ed Miliband has announced a policy review starting with a blank page and a review of the decision-making process in which non-union and non-party individuals would have a say. Doesn’t that ring alarm bells?
“I think it’s perfectly legitimate for him to indicate that he wants a fresh look. In fact, I welcome the blank page. There are those in the media and enemies within who will try to attack him, but I think he was saying that the blank piece of paper was within the framework of our beliefs and principles. It gels well with his first conference speech where he apologised for the Iraq war and signalled the end of New Labour and the adherence to market forces and neo-liberalism. Now, all that is music to my ears because we want to dismiss the weaknesses and devastation that neo-liberalism has caused within the UK.
“Partly, he wanted to reflect on the democratic way in which we conduct our business within the party. I have no problem whatsoever with that. If people believe there is a democratic deficit in certain things we do, then let’s have a debate about it. I am interested in what appears to be a disproportionate role that MPs play in the current election of the leader. I am interested in the weakness of the policy forums and the belief that people just don’t go there because they are a waste of time. I am concerned about the democratic deficit that exists at our annual conference. So all those things are going to be interesting in any debate.”
Does he fear for the Labour-union link?
“First of all, if anybody is attempting to try to sever the link with the unions, we will oppose that. This is our party. We created it at the beginning of the last century and we’ve got no intentions of giving it up to any Johnny-come-latelys. The only reason there is a sudden clamour to examine the electoral college that elected him as leader – the same electoral college that elected Tony Blair and I don’t recall any clamour to review it then – is because there are those individuals in the media, in our own party, in the chattering classes, who did not get their man and now want to shout foul. My message to those inside the party is: you lost, get on with it. We require some loyalty to the leader and we should build a party that can reconnect with the millions of ordinary working people whose vote we lost. Ed has to create a Labour Party where ordinary working people can say: ‘Do you know what, he’s on our side – he’s having a go for us’.”
So has it been a mistake to talk so much about the “squeezed middle”?
“Not necessarily a mistake, it’s part of the debate he wants to have. Of course, it would be a mistake to assume that the poor and more vulnerable members of society will automatically vote Labour. The reality is that it isn’t so and it wasn’t true at the last election. There are vast swathes of poor and vulnerable people who feel abandoned by all political parties, so it would be a mistake if this debate about the squeezed middle dismissed that group who we speak on behalf of.”
David Cameron has challenged Ed Miliband to reduce the influence of the unions in the Labour Party. Will he?
“I’m not interested in lectures on democracy from Mr Cameron. More people voted for me than elected him leader of the Conservative Party. What Ed needs to understand is that the trade union movement created the Labour Party. If there are some people in the party who just see us as a cash cow, the dotty aunt and uncle who should be kept in the attic and just brought out to sign cheques, then that’s not going to happen. We want to make certain that our views and beliefs and listened to. There is absolutely no doubt that the policy forums and the conference are now beginning to be seen as really not very relevant. If you lose the relevance of the process you are involved in, then you are in some difficulty.”
Doesn’t the figure of 16 per cent, the turnout in the Unite general secretaryship ballot, cause him great concern?
“Absolutely. General secretary elections in the trade union movement are all between 15-20 per cent, so that’s a problem that we will have to deal with. There is a paradox here. When members elect their shop stewards or vote on pay offers, we get 70-90 per cent turnouts. That’s because our members see their shop steward and their representative as the union, the face of the union. That’s understandable and an indication of just how important our shop stewards are. What happens at general secretary level is that it is the activists who understand the relevance of who the general secretary should be, but not so much the members. Now, somehow, we have to close that deficit.
“It was the Tories who introduced, back in the 1980s, the current system of secret ballots for general secretaries. If we went back to a system of properly conducted and controlled ballots at the workplace, the percentage of people would be up in the 70-80 per cent again. So, for our enemies on the right, if they are really concerned about the low turnout at general secretary elections, then fine, let’s go back to system that can be controlled in an authentic way and we’ll get a considerably bigger turnout. I’d just point out that the number of people who did vote for me was over 100,000. No MP gets that many votes, including Mr Cameron.”
So should we be looking for more overtly political general secretaries?
“I don’t think you can differentiate. Politics dictates our lives. That’s why we created the Labour Party – to have a political voice. We were making gains within the industrial arena, but those gains were being taken away within the political arena. So of course you need a political voice and a union leader needs to play a role within that.”
In that context, McCluskey mentions Jack Jones as one of his heroes, inspiring the young Liverpool dockworker in the late 1960s with his polemic pamphlet A World to Win. Any others?
“In the political arena, the one person who made me join the Labour Party back in the 1970s and has been such an incredible figure ever since has been Tony Benn. The manner in which he has conducted himself and in which he has rolled over the disgraceful personal attacks and vilification for periods of his life to give a consistently clear vision of unity, fighting for justice, decency, respect and dignity, has inspired me all my life. There are other individuals, such as Michael Foot, a wonderful orator and somebody of sustained passions. Above all, there are lots of people within my own union, people of whom nobody would have heard, who have inspired me. In the end, it comes down to individual shop stewards and reps who do a thankless job on occasions and who do it for no personal gain because they want to attain that that ultimate goal of fairness within our society.”
