Labour/Union Links
Dan Hodges used to work as an official of the GMB union, so he's well versed in the politics of the labour movement or the Labour/union link as it's often called.
Because how can the trade unions claim to be representative organisations when only a small minority of their members support the Labour Party in Scotland?
The historic link between Labour and the trade unions is about to break - thanks to the SNP
The party of Nicola Sturgeon is soaring among Scottish trade unionists. That's why Labour's 115-year tie with the unions is living on borrowed time
Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the Unite union, and Ed Miliband, Labour leader Photo: GETTY IMAGES/LNP
By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph
Earlier this week Unite leader Len McCluskey gave an interview for the Times. Buried within it was a seemingly innocuous line. Asked about whether Ed Miliband should consider working with the SNP if he finds himself leader of a minority administration, McCluskey said he should. The SNP had, he said, “undoubtedly changed the contours of the political scene”.
The SNP surge in Scotland has prized open such a vast political Pandora’s box that it’s proving very hard to keep track of all the potential implications. Will it mean legislative chaos at Westminster? Will it cause a constitutional crisis over the legitimacy of a minority Labour government? Will it finally push Scotland towards independence?
We probably won’t be in a position to answer any of those questions until weeks, months or even years after the election. But there is one significant – as yet widely overlooked – result of impending events north of the border that we can now predict with absolute certainty. Next Thursday, the historic link between the Labour party and the trade unions that has existed for 115 years will finally be severed.
The reason it will be severed is a simple one. In Scotland trade unionists are about to vote in huge numbers for a party other than the Labour party. Obviously, trade unionists have done so in previous elections. A poll for YouGov taken back in 2013 showed only 54 per cent of trade union members were actually Labour voters, with the rest spread amongst the Tories (16 per cent), Ukip (12 per cent), the Lib Dems (6 per cent), and the remaining 12 per cent spread amongst the “minor parties”.
But in Scotland as we now know, the SNP are no longer a minor party. In truth, they are not a political party at all - more a social phenomenon.
And they sweeping up Scotland’s trade unionists in the same way they are sweeping up the rest of the country.
Nine days ago Ed Miliband addressed the Scottish TUC in a desperate attempt to stem the tide. Citing Kier Hardie, who lived in Ayrshire, Labour’s leader said:“His picture hangs on my wall as a constant reminder of all the strength and courage of the people who built this movement."
His appeal fell on deaf ears. And the reason we know it fell on deaf ears is the reaction of the leader of the biggest trade union in Britain. Invited to attack the SNP, Len McCluskey said: “It would be wrong of me to launch an attack against the SNP, who have a manifesto that is anti-austerity, which is Unite’s policy, and many of the issues that they talk about are in line with the policies of my membership."
When a trade union general secretary with McCluskey’s political and industrial muscle acknowledges he can no longer resist the SNP surge, it’s over. Scotland is about to turn yellow and black, thanks in part to the votes of his members. A new poll has just been released showing Nicola Sturgeon's party poised to win every single Scottish seat. And as a result, once the election is over, it will impossible for Unite – or indeed for any of the other unions with a major presence in Scotland – to ignore political reality.
Before the autumn the SNP’s nationalist trade union group had 800 members. It now has 14,000. According to the Financial Times it is preparing to hold its inaugural conference this summer. The mainstream unions cannot allow themselves to be outflanked like this. And they cannot continue to ask their members to pay fees into a political fund that will then be used by Labour to attack the party those members are voting and campaigning for.
In truth, the writing has been on the wall for some time. During the independence referendum Unite failed to endorse either the Better Together or Yes Scotland campaigns. Speaking to a senior Unite official at the time, he said to me: “That’s the best we can do. Most of the active membership up there support independence. To be honest, if I was living up there I’d be voting for independence too."
So next week the people of Scotland will vote, and then the unions will begin the process of asserting their own independence from the Labour party. At the moment it’s not clear what form that independence will take. There may be some attempt to put in a place a devolved “Scottish settlement” that will allow the unions to overtly support, campaign for and fund the SNP, whilst retaining the traditional link in the rest of the UK. There may be some other convoluted deal cobbled together to paper over the cracks in the short-term. But the days of British trade unions exclusively supporting the party they founded way back in 1900 are drawing to an end.
And that, in turn, will change the Labour party for ever. How it is financed. How its leadership elections are conducted. How its policies are formed. How it retains its already tenuous link with its traditional working class base.
Pandora’s box is open. By the time it is shut again the historic Labour-union link will be resting deep inside it.
