IT WON’T BE LIKE WEMBLEY 1981

 

 

This isn’t a reference to the FA Cup Final replay of that year and Ricky Villa’s brilliant goal, but to a much rougher match held at Wembley four months before.

 

As we look forward to this weekend’s special Labour Party conference on rule changes, my mind goes back to January 1981, the last time the party reformed its leadership election structure.

 

After its defeat in 1979 the party had descended into civil war between left and right wing factions. The left were determined to end the exclusive right of Labour MPs to elect the leader. This was in spite of the fact that two months earlier left winger Michael Foot had been chosen as the party’s new standard bearer.

 

We reporters arrived at Wembley to a tension filled auditorium. The stakes had been raised dramatically higher by the threat of four senior former Labour cabinet ministers to form a new party if the exclusive right of Labour MPs to elect the leader was removed.

 

Undeterred the conference voted to introduce a new system whereby the unions, constituency parties and MPs would each have a third share in electing the leader.

The “Gang of Four”, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Bill Rodgers and David Owen formed the Social Democratic Party and Labour was out of office until 1997 when Tony Blair led it back to power. He reformed the famous Clause Four statement of strong socialist principles but never touched the leadership voting system.

 

So it was that Ed Miliband narrowly beat his brother by winning the union part of the electoral college even though most MPs and party activists voted for David Miliband.

 

2014: PEACE AND HARMONY.

 

Things couldn’t be more different this weekend as Labour is set to reform their leadership election method after 33 years. It’s come a long way since last summer when the Tories goaded Ed Miliband into proposing the change after allegations of Unite The Union shenanigans in the selection of a parliamentary candidate in Falkirk.

 

It looked for a while that Unite’s leader Len McCluskey would resist the reforms aimed at defusing Tory criticisms that the party was too close to the unions. But all the signs are that Saturday’s conference will rubber stamp the changes so we’d better look briefly at what they are.

 

The electoral college will be abolished. MPs will choose the short-list, but will then only have one vote each along with party members and affiliated supporters (see below) in choosing the next leader.

 

In future each trade union member will have actively to agree to a levy going to the Labour Party. Since 1946 the levy has been automatically deducted unless the member objected. Ed Miliband is taking a big financial risk with this proposal. He hopes trade unionists will take the next step by becoming affiliated supporters. He wants them to take an active interest in the party. They will get a vote in leadership elections but not in the choice of parliamentary candidates. That right will be retained by full party members.

 

Conservative critics do not believe their fox has been shot because the unions will retain their block vote at party conference and on the ruling National Executive Committee. This may be the price Miliband has paid for securing union agreement for the changes.

 

But Tories need to be careful in their criticism of who influences Labour policy. Big business continues to bankroll the Conservatives and people are still asking why plans for minimum priced alcohol and plain packaged cigarettes were withdrawn. Tory party membership is down to 100,000 partly because their activists have virtually no say in making policy.

 

All parties are struggling with plummeting party membership. Miliband’s attempt to get people to associate with the Labour Party if they won’t actually join might help a bit but it seems to acknowledge that he’s not inspiring people very much.

 

That’s partly his fault and partly the fact that there is very little to choose between the three main parties. A far cry from the Margaret Thatcher v Michael Foot General Election that followed two years after that memorable conference at Wembley.

 

 

 

 

 

40 YEARS ON….WAGES ARE CENTRE STAGE AGAIN.

 

 

 

 

40 years ago trade union power ensured that the nation’s politics and economics revolved around wage demands. Now the weakness of unions is being held responsible for the strange characteristics of the recession from which we are emerging. The fact that unemployment didn’t rise much above 2.5m during the worst slump since the thirties is attributed to workers concluding that accepting flat wages was better than losing a job after an heroic strike. People have seen the cost of living go up while earnings have stagnated, and yet there has been little evidence of industrial action. The government is felt to be in charge with a clear direction whether we like it or not.

 

It is incredible to compare the country now with forty years ago. Ted Heath was in the last months of his premiership. In the face of an overtime ban by the National Union of Mineworkers, British industry began 1974 under a State of Emergency and drastic measures to protect dwindling coal stocks. Rota power cuts meant that factories, homes and offices would only get power three days a week. Floodlit football was banned and TV went off early.

 

How had it come to this? For decades the UK’s economic performance was declining just as union power was rising. The Labour Government in the late sixties had attempted to improve a truly off strike record with proposals entitled “In Place of Strife”. The unions wouldn’t have it and by the time the Conservatives returned to power in 1970 people were seriously asking if the government or the Trades Union Congress were running the country.

 

Ted Heath was determined to answer that question in his favour and set up the Industrial Relations Court in 1971. It had the power to grant injunctions to stop strikes. It was an utter failure. Unions were fined and faced having their funds seized. Dockers were jailed for defying the court and a possible General Strike was only averted by the intervention of the Official Solicitor that no one had heard of before to free the men. So instead of settling industrial relations, Heath’s measures had exacerbated them. The question loomed larger and larger, Who Governs Britain?

 

As January turned into February the miners showed no signs of yielding, Heath decided on a General Election on that question. He expected that people plunged into gloom and candlelight would turn on the workers. That was certainly the view of many in the Labour Party. However voters were not yet ready to face down the unions and soon Labour’s Harold Wilson was back. People wanted Wilson to settle with the unions and give everyone a quiet life.

 

Short term fixes didn’t work and five years later gave their backing to Margaret Thatcher who decimated the power of the unions and forced Labour to change from being the party of the workers to a more ambiguous role in the centre of politics. That’s how the current government have been able to impose massive public spending cuts and hold down wages.

 

But how long will this passivity in the workforce continue? This year could see people demanding higher pay as the economy turns, particularly if employers start to find a shortage of skilled workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NORTHERN REVOLUTION

Downtown in Business  campaign for a “northern revolution” to close the North South divide got a major boost this week. A leading think tank has recommended that cash strapped councils and public agencies across the North should come together to find new ways of delivering services in cooperation with the private sector.

 

The Smith Institute launched the report in Leeds amid claims that public spending cuts were on such a scale that senior officers and councillors could quit in despair. The report’s author, Michael Ward, warned town hall trade unions that they must cooperate in change of suffer the fate of the print unions who led a futile fight against changes in newspaper production in the 1980s.

 

Public sector cuts are leading to a major rethink about the very basis on which services are delivered. Roger Marsh, Northern Leader for Government and the Public Sector for Price Waterhouse Cooper in Leeds feels the current system of delivering council services is broken. He believes the Combined Authority model already operating in Greater Manchester could be copied in West Yorkshire.

 

The report paints a gloomy picture of the central government’s ability to sustain local government from a shrinking pool of tax revenue. It says that North Sea oil is in decline and countries are engaged in a race to the bottom in slashing Corporation Tax.

 

The report analyses the claim that northern councils are doing worse than their southern counterparts in the current settlement. They find that it is so and point out that the New Homes Bonus is benefiting southern councils that would have built new houses anyway.

 

Mr Ward called on councils to use technology to cut costs so they could concentrate on personal services for children and the old. John Pugh, the Lib Dem MP for Southport, said it was not a good time for council’s to be visionary. His authority, Sefton, was totally preoccupied with coping with the cuts.

 

Mr Ward ended with a rallying call for a Constitutional Convention for England to debate his proposals. Perhaps he will join Downtown’s Northern Revolution.

COME DINE WITH ME

So now we know how those millionaires secured their tax break in the recent budget…. dining at Dave’s Dodgy Downing Street diner.

Mind you Labour is in no position to point fingers with the Unite union effectively choosing the next Labour leader and possible Prime Minister.

Nor are the Lib Dems in the clear on the issue of party funding, remember their association with donor Michael Brown who was convicted of fraud?

We’re told politicians hate these fund raising dinners when they have to sit for hours over the rubber chicken listening to some boring, but hopelessly wealthy donor, droning on about the 50p tax rate.

Well let’s put them out of their misery.

I’m a member of the Richard the Third Society. We campaign to correct the wholly distorted image of this fine king by that Tudor spin doctor Will Shakespeare. We can only spend the subscriptions we receive. It is the same for thousands of clubs and organisations all over the country.

So let the political parties survive on what they can get individual members to pay, with a ceiling of £5000.

I can hear the howls of anguish now. The democratic process will grind to a halt! The parties won’t be able to communicate with the voters!

What does this communication amount to? In the years between elections the parties tick over, selecting candidates, fighting local elections and spending modest amounts of money. When the General Election comes all reason is cast to the wind and millions are spent on posters, battle buses and political consultants. The mounting debts can be left for another day.

Most of what that money is spent on irritates the public profoundly. That’s why the concept of state aid (you and I paying for it in our taxes) is a non runner.

There is an argument that the political parties should be able to communicate with us directly on TV without the interference of journalists. So I propose that the BBC be charged with producing the party political broadcasts out of the licence fee money.

Not an appropriate use of the licence fee? Sorry that principle has been breeched already with BBC money being siphoned off to pay for digital switchover.

Most attention has focused on the Tories but Labour has become far too dependent on the unions. Union barons bankroll the party up to 90%. Ed Miliband denounces most strikes, so we can’t say this arrangement buys the barons much effect on policy. But the unions did bring their influence to bear in the leadership election. With rank and file members and MPs backing David Miliband, it was the union vote that secured Ed his victory. After the Bradford West debacle many in the party think the unions made a bad call.

Union members should have to positively opt in to having part of their sub paid to the Labour Party. I think most would and if not, that’s tough.

In any other walk of life if you want someone to give you money, you have to provide a product or service that they want. So it should be in politics. Then we stop this endless cycle of scandal as parties try to raise money either from dodgy characters or people expecting influence.