Monday 8 July 2013

Why unite should disaffiliate from the labour party

Unite who pays millions into labour every year and are by far labours biggest donor who have been caught up in the latest debacle in Falkirk west. Its time for unite to disaffiliate I believe. For many years the unions have paid into labour hoping for better this day has never come. Now unite has finally started to punch its weight in the labour party it’s found itself caught out and demonised. This should tell Len and all those in the leadership of our union that this strategy of “reclaiming labour” is flawed and will end up wasting millions of member’s money and ultimately loose us jobs and valuable time in building an alternative... I am a unite member and am proud to be so I am less proud of our unions political campaigning its weak at best pathetic at worst. Millions of our hard earned pounds go to the labour party without us having a say. The political fund should be opened up and democratised as a first step. Why should a select few who are labour party members decide what the unions political fun is spent on this is hugely undemocratic and must be brought to an end as soon as possible. As a member of the socialist party who campaign within TUSC I cannot understand why unite who apparently is moving to the left I’m far from convinced given they are still giving discounts and vouchers to use in marks and Spencer who still use workfare well played comrades looking out for those young low paid workers I see there !. There is no logical reason why unite and all unions for that matter would fund the labour party those who oppose breaking the link cannot even use well there is no alternative anymore as there clearly is. TUSC may not be a party but it is ready and waiting for bigger unions to take it up and get involved and mould it to represent ordinary workers at all levels in a union. I wont stop paying my political fund levee with unite as ridiculously if you stop paying this all of your political fund is stopped which is not what we are arguing for. We as Marxists argue the political fund should be democratised at the very least and at most broke totally with labour and we should be backing each candidate on merit if a labour party member is against the cuts which a few have been then that’s fine as long as they agree to unites position of opposition to all cuts to jobs and services I have no problem with that. The thing is this would quickly come to a head as those who do oppose the cuts in labour are in a minority bringing the need for a question on political representation for workers firmly back on to the agenda. Labour claim they want more working class candidates this is code for more working class candidates who agree with our line of slower cuts. This is not good enough and unite should not be bounced into supporting union backed pro austerity candidates even if they are so called working class. Its time for those in unite who are serious about fighting the cuts to make up their minds do we go on funding labour for ever and a day or do we make a clean break and start a fresh. I say we opt for the later.

No comments:

Post a Comment