Discord: Labour, the Unions and the Collective Bargain

As the UK Labour Party continue to argue that they can be a party both of austerity and of progress, welfare, and reform (Wintour & Sparrow, 2013), trade unions continue their campaign against austerity as something that is killing all of those things. So which is it?

That disagreement - over the methods by which reform is achieved - between what are ostensibly the two most powerful factions of the same movement, represents much of the modern history of the British labour movement.

Before organising the Labour Party as a focus for workers political support, British trade unions had used a mixture of industrial action and support for the Liberal Party to secure some legislative concessions. The founding of a party for the labour movement signalled a tactical change - the unions now sought in elected office the power to defend the interests of workers, through their own candidates.

That strategy has come to define Labour. Leaders such as Bevan and Gaitskell both found the institutions of the British state, and the power concentrated in them, to be valuable enough to justify their preservation.

'The argument is about power … because only by the possession of power can you get the priorities correct.' (Bevan, 1949)

'We, as middle-class socialists, have got to have a profound humility. Though it's a funny way of putting it, we've got to know that we lead them because they can't do it without us, with our abilities, and yet we must feel humble to working people.' (Gaitskell, in Bogdanor, 1983)

'And parliament, in Bevan's eyes, was not only a prize to be defended; it was a weapon to be used... positively to retain the initiative in the hands of a reforming administration.' (Foot on Bevan, 1973)

While in control of those institutions, they possessed the ability to change some things for the better, and to protect others. However, retaining use of that power also meant making compromises with a system and establishment largely opposed to the organised labour movement. It also means keeping alive the virtually unchecked and potentially tyrannical power of British Cabinet Government for the use of opponents as well, if Labour should prove unable to hold onto their position.

That was always going to be a risky strategy, one that demanded a single minded focus from the party, a devotion to getting hold of and keeping power, first and foremost. It also has a side effect: fear.

'Crosland took the traditional structure of the British state for granted, and failed to see that the centralist, elitist logic underlying it was incompatible with his own libertarian and egalitarian values.' (David Marquand on Gaitskell's colleague Anthony Crosland, in Bogdanor, 1983)

From the beginning, the aims of the unions and the methods of the party were slightly out of synch. As such, union control over the party has waxed and waned - so too their power over policies when Labour have been in government. Since Mrs Thatcher's government sought to break the power of collective bargaining, and the old fashioned capital driven political orthodoxy was restored, the power of the unions has weakened considerably both in society and within the Labour Party (Crick, 2011).

Labour's own moves to reduce the influence of unions is difficult to see as anything other than a cynical move to ensure a swift return to power - a guarantor of their willingness to talk austerity. But what they have forgotten is the fear.

The British system of government is in constant flux, open to shifts and changes at any time with any majority. Within that structure, cherished values exist on weak foundations. When Labour are out of government there is renewed fear that cherished rights like healthcare, welfare, and progress, will come under attack. But the fear is not just of having to make small concessions to people with opposing viewpoints, it's of what those concessions could lead to.

The confrontations over strike action in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the confrontations over public sector pensions in the present, are all part of the same chain of events, the same conflict, the same fears. The miners trying to save their industry, upon which their livelihoods depended; and the same fears again, now, over pensions, and rising costs in education and housing. The instability of the British constitution - the shape of the British government - prevents the unions and organised labour from making even small, sensible, concessions for fear of opening a floodgate that might undo the work, the struggle, of a whole century.

In pursuit of political power, Labour has failed to put those fears to bed. It failed to set the cherished values in stone, and all because the power contained in the present establishment was too useful. This is at the heart of the present discord between the Labour Party and the unions.

As Labour sought out the political power to achieve its aims, it found that this meant making concessions on matters that unions could and would not. That schism forced the unions to fall back on power plays made necessary by the system; mobilised popular power, the collective bargain and strikes.

To stop the fear, and the conflict that it drives, some surety needs to be brought to those things that people cherish and feel are under threat. If the Labour Party does not believe it is possible to support that kind of surety, in the form of backing a constitution or charter guaranteeing workers rights and pensions, then the time may have come for the unions to take their support elsewhere.

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References:
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+ Patrick Wintour & Andrew Sparrow's 'Labour can achieve radical change amid austerity, says Ed Miliband'; in The Guardian; 21 June 2013.

+ Aneurin Bevan, from a speech at Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 8 June 1949.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983.

+ Michael Foot's 'Aneurin Bevan: 1945-1960'; Davis-Poynter, 1973.

+ Michael Crick's 'Miliband plans to cut union block vote'; on the BBC, 27 June 2011.