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Labour lurch to the right will isolate it from working people

Lord Collins's proposals will end union's collective voice in electing the leader of the Labour Party, writes BILL GREENSHIELDS

The decision of the Labour Party's national executive committee to endorse the Collins report on trade union affiliation will further deepen the crisis in working-class political representation.

Most affiliated unions have decided to support Lord Collins's proposals, which will end their collective voice in electing the leader of the Labour Party if endorsed at next Saturday's special conference.

Despite its potential to change the nature of the party this conference is scheduled to take a mere two hours.

In backing the changes unions are surrendering a powerful weapon in the struggle to reclaim the Labour Party for the labour movement.

All they get in return is cut-price membership of Labour for union members.

The Communist Party (CP) warned 18 months ago in an open letter to the labour movement that "should the Labour Party continue on a right-wing course up to and during the next general election the trade union movement and the left will have a duty to consider what steps may be necessary to ensure that the labour movement has its own mass party.

"The perspective may need to change from one of the labour movement struggling to reclaim the Labour Party to that of re-establishing a mass party of labour."

The CP's trade union organiser Anita Halpin points out that the proposals will fragment the link between Labour and the unions - replacing the collective strength of trade union votes with those of individual registered or affiliated supporters by the end of the year.

"Trade union representatives on the Labour NEC have voted for their own marginalisation, swallowing the worthless carrot of a review in five years' time."

And unless the Collins reforms are defeated, she says, this five-year period will be used to erode and eventually abolish collective trade union participation in the Labour Party.

Our international secretary John Foster argues that adopting the Collins report will be a "great strategic setback" for all those seeking to reclaim the Labour Party for the working class.

And as former Unite national organiser Graham Stevenson says "the mobilisation of the working class and the organisation of deeply rooted movements determine the fate of political parties - not vice-versa.

"This has been the experience of the labour movement ever since the foundation of the International Working Men's Association by trade unions and communists, including Karl Marx, 175 years ago in London.

"The Communist Party raised in its open letter the possible need for the TUC to resume its historic responsibility and convene a special conference of all labour movement organisations to discuss the political representation of that movement in the House of Commons," Stevenson reminds us.

CP women's organiser and Unison activist Liz Payne has called on the Morning Star to use its unique role as the only daily socialist newspaper in Britain to facilitate a strategic debate on the crisis of working-class representation.

Our party welcomes the rapid progress of the People's Assembly movement, which is key to mobilising the working class to defeat the neoliberal austerity being rammed down our throats by this unelected government.

We send our greetings to all those attending the Women's Assembly Against Austerity being held today and will do our utmost to help it and the People's Assembly recall conference on March 15 take the labour and progressive movement forward.

This government is waging war on the working class. All of us have a role to play in ensuring that this war ends in our victory, not theirs.

 

This articled is based on the Communist Party political committee discusion held on February 20

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