Ed Miliband is under siege from the loathsome right-wing press and some of his dumber backbenchers who still yearn for the “Banana Prince” over the water. His leadership is derided, the cartoonists are having a field day with his mildly Wallace and Gromit appearance and John Humphrys is congratulating himself on another scalp over the Labour leader’s confusion about the “squeezed middle” of England.
But Ed has time on his side. The unions and the people they represent don’t have that luxury. The crisis is upon them and they have to react, to offer leadership. All too often, trade unions are reactive bodies. Fashioning political direction is not what they do and that goes a long way to explaining their essentially conservative nature. Except for the heady years of the TUC-Labour Party liaison committee in the 1970s, when union policies really did influence what a Labour government was doing, it has been react, react, react all down the line.
And that’s what made them quite good at it – historically, but not right now. After 13 years of behaving themselves because Labour was in office, union leaders were as surprised as anyone by the student revolt against higher tuition fees. Rioting in Whitehall – much exaggerated, but real – and the assault on Tory Party headquarters caught them on the back foot, unable to condemn and afraid to approve. This was not on the agenda of the September Congress in Manchester. Anger on Millbank did not figure in the relevant composite resolution.
So what are they doing? I went to a “Cuts of Mass Destruction” conference in Doncaster, organised by construction union UCATT, to find out what one section of the labour movement is up to. Around 30 delegates from all over the north gathered to hear rousing speeches from full-time and lay officials, and to put their own point of view.
It was a businesslike event in the brand-new Trades Club, on the fourth floor overlooking Doncaster jail and the old coalfield stretching to the horizon – Ed Miliband’s constituency. UCATT general secretary Alan Ritchie set the cuts in their political context, pointing out parallels with Margaret Thatcher’s years in power. He warned of further unemployment because government is his industry’s biggest client. Less school and hospital building, more unemployed bricklayers, electricians, painters and plumbers. Fewer apprenticeships for the next generation. He urged delegates to expose the real impact of the cuts, appealing to naked self-interest where necessary and working with other groups, including churches, where possible. “People are not stupid”, he argued, “but until the cuts hit them directly, it’s difficult to understand what they really mean. You have to take workers with you.”
Regional officer Steve Murphy, an ex-brickie from Sheffield, observed that “kids are out on the streets”, while others asked why should they protest. “We’re already seeing division in our communities. It must be some kind of record that a government comes to power and after only six months you have 14 to 16-year-old kids out on the streets fighting for their future.” National officer Steve Craig urged: “We must resist, we must campaign.”
The atmosphere was quiet, rather than sombre. These were largely men in their 30s and older family men, with a lot to lose. But there was an almost tangible feel to the backdrop of student agitation. Reminded that the TUC was organising a march and national protest in Hyde Park next March, a delegate from Barnsley remarked that he might well be out of a job by then. His Labour-controlled council is being forced to make huge cuts in manpower. The thought came to mind: why wait until March to march? The students are doing it today, planning fresh street protests in Leeds that will hit the banks and the financial district. Leeds is colder than Moscow at present, while the police are swaggeringly reasserting their authority with promises of “game changing” tactics to contain – if not crush – protest.
But few union leaders seem willing to follow the lead of the young. Bob Crow, predictably, has done so. And in his first interview (in the Daily Mirror) since being elected general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey predicted a wave of strikes and offered this view: “We have to build a kind of resistance and take action that makes politicians and in particular the Lib Dems say: ‘We may have got this wrong.’ I am quite pleased that people are evoking the images of the poll tax demonstrations.”
Carefully-chosen words, including his remark that a general strike could not be ruled out. But McCluskey knows full well (or, at any rate, should) that a general strike would be deemed a political strike, and would be struck down by the courts as unlawful under the anti-union legislation introduced by Thatcher’s Conservative Government. This is not a counsel of despair. Something must be done, to quote a pre-war Prince of Wales, something more than working with the churches and waiting for the populace to feel the impact of the cuts in their own wallets. That might not happen soon enough, or at all. Meanwhile, demoralised workers are heading for the door. Leeds City Council, controlled by a Labour minority since May, is having to make 3,000 job cuts over the next four years. Several hundred have already applied for redundancy. Still reverberating in my mind is the remark by the lad from Barnsley who might be out of a job before the TUC march impinges on the public consciousness. He deserves better – and so do thousands like him.
