Dancing to the tune of the unions

SO HERE WE HAVE IT, the general secretary of Unite Len McCluskey; that imperious figure is once more threatening to withdraw his union's funding from the  Labour Party unless it picks the 'right leader' as it did when Ed Miliband won the leadership battle purely on the union vote. McCluskey speaks in that ear piercing, harsh, and always threatening scouse accent that one had never heard before or soon after the Beatles. This man is a bullying Neanderthal who the Labour Party have always given far too much respect to because they depend upon the union bosses for both money and votes when it comes to the leadership elections and votes at party conferences.

                

                The effective rule over the Labour Party has always been orchestrated by the trade unions; and the party, fearful of losing their financial contribution, have always sought to make deals with them that have helped keep the party from power but solvent in opposition. The events surrounding Ed Miliband's election personifies the true relationship between the Labour Party and its Frankensteinian masters. The unions boast that the Labour Party was their creation and therefore by intent, their creature - for eternity.

                

                 Time after time the party has been in thrall to the trade unions. It was in the 1980s that this grip on the party, that some believed could no longer be tolerated; and so four right-wing Labour MPs (known as the Gang of Four) decided to break away to create a new party calling itself the Social Democrat Party (SDP) a party much ridiculed at the time by a left-wing led Labour Party, by now under the leadership of Michael Foot; who met with only embarrassment at the ballot box in 1983 - but still the coin never dropped as far as the unions were concerned.

                

                 It was because of the unions and their unwarranted influence on the Labour Party that caused this split and they vowed never to allow another elected Labour government, except on the their own left-wing terms. The SDP schism came two generations to early. They came before their time.

                 Tony Blair may have, because of his electoral successes managed to keep the might of the unions in perpetual somnolence for length of his reign. But the unions bided their time until a more sympathetic leader could be chosen – enter Ed Miliband, a true believer in socialism - partly because of his well concealed infatuation with his parent's induction into Marxism.

               

                 Now, after this May's general election and the failure of Miliband, the Labour Party is even considering changing the party's name – perhaps to the SDP? The Labour Party, (the party of labour) is no longer any such thing; which is why it lost so many traditional working class voters to Ukip in the North. The Labour Party betrayed the white working class - the foundation upon which they built their party in the first place.

THE UNIONS will always keep Labour in opposition because no leader, apart from Tony Blair, has ever stood up to them. No party leader dared, for instance, to challenge the legitimacy, in the modern age, of Clause IV of the party's constitution until Blair came along.

                

                  I see no one standing in the current leadership race that comes anywhere near to Blair's robust and full-bodied excoriation of the union's hegemony over the Labour Party. For all his faults, when it came to the brothers, Blair knew that they would always drag the party backwards until the people would eventually turn their backs on the party: because of them the party had been out of power for 18 years until Blair arrived on the scene. It was the effort by Blair to modernise the party that gave him his three election victories; which left the unions impotent to act (they would have sold their souls to have been able to do so) against him.

                

                  Blair, as far as the country was concerned, fucked it up in the end for those who came after him. I can tell you how, but this is not the purpose of this piece. But when it came to the party's relationship with the unions, he deserves much credit for daring to do what no other party leader ever considered doing – taking on and defeating the unions, and keeping the party free of their  abysmal influence until he left office.

                

                 The Labour Party has always been hamstrung by the unions and Blair courted the private sector for funds; knowing that the unions would always cough-up come a general election. Blair dared the unions to withdraw their funding when a general election appeared on the horizon. The union fear of a Tory government always made them cough-up in the end, and Blair understood this.

                

                 The unions will always provide the funds for Labour; because they fear industrial legislation from a Tory government that may restrict their ability to strike, for instance, when in some cases, only 15 or 20 per cent of union members within a specific union organised profession turn out to vote for industrial action.

THE LABOUR PARTY must either tame the unions or abandon them. Blair briefly tamed them. But is there anyone standing for the leadership of the Party that are prepared to take on the likes of Len McCluskey? The unions are Labour's problem; not the Tories or any other party. The Labour Party must sort out its relationship with the unions on terms acceptable to the British public.

                

                 The union relationship has to be broken. The Labour Party cannot survive without drastic reform that cuts the umbilical cord between Labour and the trade unions. This will however never come about. Blair gave the party it's one and only chance to sever the tie, but once he left office, the tie was strengthened under Gordon Brown and passed on to his successor Ed Miliband to recreate the pre-Blair Labour Party.

                

                 Either the union influence on the Labour Party has to be done away with through separation, or the Labour Party will fall into abeyance as a credible party of government that the people would want to vote for - the unions have always held back the Labour Party and will continue their efforts until the party chooses the right candidate that the unions can manipulate to their own purpose, as they thought they had with Ed Miliband – but the people, as it eventually turns out, were never fooled.