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.

Keep Calm and Carry On: Wilde, Authority, and the Perils Mutual Responsbility

The onset of the financial crisis brought with it unemployment and the tightening of wallets across the whole class spectrum. One interesting side effect has been the work of certain enterprising profiteers, who seem to have found controversial success in digging up war time slogans and making brands out of them (Wainwright, 2013).

The British war time adage, 'Keep Calm and Carry On', has popped up everywhere - particularly in the last year, as the Queen's jubilee has seen the UK covered in Union flags and the symbols of the monarchy. It was originally designed as a motivational poster but went unused. In fact, the motivational campaign launched by the British government, of which the poster had originally been part, was largely considered to have been a failure - either being ignored or causing offence amongst the people for being the patronising work of the upper classes (Walker, 2012).

When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition came into office in Britain they tried to adopt a similar slogan, 'we are all in this together'. However that attempt has faced the same sort of response, and has become more of a joke than an inspiring phrase due to the concentration of millionaires in the government's ranks (Doble, 2010).

The attempts to remove the slogan from that original context are entirely problematic. But what is interesting about those attempts is that organisations continue to try and adopt this large and recognisable brand, despite both the failure of the slogan's original campaign, and the failure of the government to co-opt the spirit of it for their own uses.

One organisation that has tried to compete for control of the sentiment is the UK Labour Party. They have responded by offering similar, though often watered down, versions of the Conservative approach (Seymour, 2012). Starting with Blue Labour, and now through One Labour, the party has been trying to convince the public that they are the representatives of the people, all struggling equally in the name of a common cause.

However, arguments about creating 'mutual responsibility' disguise the inherent corporatism of the vision - where personal independence is diminished and subsumed by the community in the name of solidarity - which can only diminish self-determination and self-discipline beneath the oppressive weight of 'traditional' institutions; in other words, under systems of authority and control.

The danger of corporatist visions - those that order the world by traditions, families or religions with the authority and control of an establishment - is that they do not seek to free people to share in those things. They bind people to them. Trap them. And that is where the success of a brand like 'Keep Calm And Carry On' makes its appearance. It is a declaration of mutual solidarity between people, co-opted by an authority for the reinforcement of its version of the social order onto those under its authority.

At this point, when those in elite and privileged positions use the phrase towards others, who invariably include those less privileged, the phrase potentially becomes something quite repulsive. Oscar Wilde, in his The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), stressed how 'grotesque and insulting' this approach is:

'Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.'

Wilde's work warned us against the dangerous aim of catchphrases like 'Keep Calm And Carry On', to control people and bind them into rigid and predefined communities. Our aim instead aught to be the liberation of people; to enable them choose for themselves - to work together with communities cooperatively because they rationally see worth in it, rather than because they have been forced.

We must be careful that, in our wish to belong, we remain wary of the dangers of allowing individual identity be consumed by the group. Losing ourselves when we merge with the identities of communities, or nationalities, threatens freedom, difference, and diversity of perspective, and risks the possibility of their subjugation. That path only leads us down a dark alley where it is difficult to see, or escape from, the inequalities and iniquities of the social order; or to imagine those things that might lead us out again.

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References:
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+ Martin Wainwright's 'Keep Calm and Carry On trademark battle enters new year'; in The Guardian; 2 January 2013.

+ Susannah Walker's 'Home Front Posters: Of the Second World War'; Shire; 2012.

+ Anna Doble's 'Who Knows Who: the coalition cabinet'; on Channel 4 News; 13 May 2010.

+ Richard Seymour's 'Miliband's "one nation", Cameron's "all in this together" – spot the difference'; in The Guardian; 5 October 2012.

+ Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'; London, 1891.

Double Standards in Peace, Security and Diplomacy

At the end of last month the UK and France presented a united front before the rest of the European Union. They were pushing for the EU to ease the arms embargo on Syria to allow weapons to be supplied to the rebels (Traynor, 2013).

The decision to push for greater intervention in the internal affairs of another nation - a move which has so antagonised the rest of Europe - is consistent with the advice of Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat, who argued in a 2002 essay that civilised nations should have a 'double standard' in diplomatic relations:

'Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.'

That statement, that policy, holds an inconsistency that could be very dangerous. However it is an inconsistency born out of practicality. Peace is the ideal, but many find it impractical in the face of violence and aggression; and when that is the case, a struggle begins over defining what is a legitimate use of force.

The United Nations embodies that difficult position. Established to promote consensus diplomacy as an alternative to the old ways of war and conquest, the United Nations has often found itself trying to balance the practical response with the idealistic stance. For instance, the Charter establishing the United Nations tells us that:

'The Purposes of the United Nations are... To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.'

To achieve that purpose, United Nations peacekeeping missions have been deployed to troubled areas around the globe to provide security for civilians. However their missions are restricted by the rules that govern how and when peacekeepers can act, rules that the forces they come into contact with are not obliged to share. But the difficulties created by trying to juggle these dual purposes of peace and security are only one symptom of the problem.

There are long term repercussions in working to a double standard, not only to the UN and its peacekeeping missions, but also to the pursuit of peaceful diplomacy. To ditch the process of consensus diplomacy and international law when it is found to be impractical sets a dangerous precedent:

'What is important... is the example one gives. One of the big issues facing the European Court of Human Rights is teaching newly democratic States about democracy. One of its biggest client cases is Russia. Another one in terms of democracy is Turkey. It is a problem with the Council of Europe mechanisms that some States simply do not fix their systems as they should do and it would be a great pity if a long-established State — the United Kingdom, which was there at the founding and there at the drafting — were to set an example to other States in the Council of Europe that they do not have to abide by the law. This is where politics and international relations come in. It is incredibly important that the rule of law be respected at an international level because if we have law/law then we do not have war/war.' (Aidan O'Neill QC; 44:21; 2011)

It can be tempting to give in to the realities of the moment and take a practical solution when aiming for the short term gains or ends. Cooper's 'double standards' diplomacy is pragmatism in action - deciding on the outcome desired and then using whichever means is most effective, backed by the utilitarian ideal that the ends can justify the means.

But every time you do, you put your ideals at risk. The hypocrisies of inconsistent or arbitrary behaviour, in pursuit of end goals, creates contradictions that damage universal rights, legal justice and relationships. In times of strain, pressure, or violence, reinforcing our ideals and consistently applying them becomes more, not less, important - and we should be loath to ever let them be lightly put aside.

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References:
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+ Ian Traynor's 'UN Golan Heights mission in doubt as EU lifts Syria arms embargo'; in The Guardian; 28 May 2013.

+ Robert Cooper's 'The new liberal imperialism'; in The Observer; 7 April 2002; Originally published as 'The post-modern state'; in Reordering the World: the long term implications of September 11; The Foreign Policy Centre; 2002.

+ Charter of the United Nations

+ Aidan O'Neill QC in the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, 2011.
   Written - 'Voting by convicted prisoners: summary of evidence' February 2011;
   Video - Tuesday 1 February 2011 at 10.10am ended at 12.07pm;