Britain: Trade union convention decides little
8 February, London

More than 700 union activists from 130 branches gathered in central London on 7 February for a so-called "Convention of the Trade Union Left". The event, which emerged from a call from the Socialist Alliance last autumn, had added significance as it coincided with the expulsion from the Labour Party of the RMT union that very day. The union's bluntly-spoken general secretary, Bob Crow, was the keynote speaker of the opening plenary.

The RMT, a relatively small but rapidly growing and militant union, had (in an earlier incarnation) been one of the Labour Party's key founders more than a century ago. The day before the Convention a special union conference had voted overwhelmingly (42-8) to reaffirm a July 2003 decision that had allowed RMT branches to affiliate to the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP).This move had inspired the wrath of the Labour Party's national executive, which had given the RMT an ultimatum with which it refused to comply.

Crow certainly gave a star turn with his combination of „cockney geezer‰ wit and impassioned rhetoric against New Labour, "a party carrying out Tory policies against working people", winning him a standing ovation from most of the audience. He disappeared swiftly, however, and did not participate in what had been billed as the main debate of the day on the question of the trade union link to the Labour Party.

While indicating that the RMT was free to &Mac246; and almost certainly would &Mac246; support the SSP, he also stated that it would retain its small parliamentary of a dozen or so Labour MPs who have agreed to fight for four key planks of the RMT's own policies. He did not, however, give any hint as to whether the union would lend any financial support to the recently launched "Respect" electoral coalition, headed by expelled Labour MP George Galloway, and supplied with foot soldiers by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

The conference observed a moment's silence for the 19 Chinese immigrants who had perished in Morecambe Bay, victims of British immigration controls and cut-throat "gangster" capitalism. It also heard a rousing speech from Leicester College NATFHE striker, Siobhan Logan, and donated some £400 to the lecturers' strike fund before listening to a curious, meandering speech from her general secretary Paul Mackney.

The afternoon took a curious turn as the two main protagonists in the scheduled debate did not materialise. CWU general secretary, Billy Hayes, had apparently forgotten that the event fell on the same day as his son's birthday (!), while PCS leader Mark Serwotka was apparently embroiled with a union issue in Leeds. In the event there was 90-minute discussion involving some 25 delegates, with the appearance of scrupulous balance between those arguing variations of a "reclaim Labour" position and those who favoured either "democratisation" or in one or two instances straightforward disaffiliation.

Though there were some undeniably good contributions, the exercise became increasingly tedious and while virtually every political tendency present had an opportunity to speak somehow no Workers Power comrade was called to the microphone despite the fact that several had lodged speakers' slips. As a result there was never a clear case put for the foundation of a new workers' party as an alternative to the ever more pro-big business, pro-imperialist policies of New Labour and the anodyne populism of Respect.

The audience was remarkably passive throughout the protracted discussion, with little heckling except when veteran AWL supporter Jim Denham attacked Respect for failing to maintain the historic demand of a "worker's MP on a worker's wage" in deference to George Galloway's upmarket lifestyle. Leading SWP members in the Stop the War Coalition heckled briefly when a CWU executive member suggested that the Coalition had intervened to block attempts to cut off support from CWU-backed MPs who voted in favour of the Iraq war.

The SWP was obviously central to almost every aspect of the event, with all three of those chairing plenary sessions coming from its ranks and virtually all the meetings of the various union groups being convened by its activists. So it was all the more surprising that there was very little emphasis put on the Respect coalition: no banner, no stall, no badges or stickers. In fact, the largest far-left organisation seemed somewhat subdued and disorientated during the course of a day characterised by polite debate and a lost opportunity to build support for the RMT in the wake of its expulsion and chart the path towards building rank and file organisations within and across unions.

It was left to Geoff Martin, UNISON's London regional convenor and a Labour Party stalwart, to emphasise that those union representatives on Labour's national executive, such as UNISON's Maggie Jones, who had moved the RMT's expulsion, must be brought to book and that the general secretaries of those unions that had turned a blind eye to the RMT's fate must not be let off the hook.

Further articles

RESPECT has no place for socialism and class struggle
Labour's reactionary parliamentary programme
Bush's visit provokes massive outrage
Galloway expulsion brings left electoral alliance nearer
Liquidation conference of Socialist Alliance?