The unions are getting thoroughly angry at government cuts and service reforms. They’re already planning a day of autumn strikes – and at a fringe meeting, Matt Ross hears much talk of direct action and ideological struggles.
While Ed Miliband tries to inspire his party without scaring off the middle ground or sounding dismissive of the debt problem, the unions are getting noisily furious about the coalition’s cuts and service reforms. And unlike former Brown adviser Miliband, they have the luxury of being able to trash the Labour government’s record in office – particularly its wooing of the City.
A loud ‘I told you so!’ emerged from a union fringe on the cuts at Labour conference. The unions had warned about the dangers of pandering to the financial sector, said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, “and now that crisis has come to pass. Now ordinary working men and women are paying the price, even as the pockets of the spivs and the speculators still jingle with gold.” Labour’s outsourcing of services has, said GMB general secretary Paul Kenny – the new president of the TUC – meant that “there’s plenty of money being spent on public services. The trouble is that it’s all going into private pockets.” And Unison general secretary Dave Prentis, clapped into the fringe meeting after telling the conference hall that the Labour leadership must support the unions’ planned 30 November day of action, took a swipe at PFI – which was, he said, “like buying a house with a credit card.”
Miliband’s plans to reform the party’s constitution have also annoyed the unions. CWU general secretary Billy Hayes sounded supportive of Labour, but still urged Miliband to put aside “distracting” constitutional reforms. “We have to reject attempts to make us turn in on ourselves,” he added.
The unions’ real target, though, was the government. The Tories’ ideological determination to “dismantle the state is so big that we haven’t got our heads around what’s coming”, said Kenny. “It ranges from cutting subsidies for old people’s coach travel to dismembering the NHS.” Cuts, the panel insisted, will never restore growth. “If the private sector isn’t investing, the government needs to find the money,” said McCluskey. We’re wasting money on benefits for redundant builders while materials and sites lie unused, he added: “A five-year-old could join the dots!”
The credit crunch has confirmed all the unions’ views of global capitalism – and the government’s spending cuts all their views of the Tories. Now they’re putting aside the boxing gloves they’ve been wearing during Labour’s administration, and dusting off the heavy weapons. Prentis recalled Nye Bevan’s comment that if you stick to the middle of the road, you get run over. “Well, we’re not sticking to the middle of the road,” he said. McCluskey called for direct action, arguing that “we should rule nothing out in this dispute,” and Kenny picked up the thread. “If they close a library or a school, I think we should occupy it,” he said. “We have to harness the anger that will begin to appear. If it comes to civil disobedience, I’m not afraid to go to prison. I want to tell my kids and grandkids that I did everything I could to stop the dismantling of the state.”
The 30 November action, said the Unite and Unison chiefs, is not just about pension cuts: it’s a challenge both to the coalition’s whole economic policy, and to a concerted Tory attempt to whittle away public services. “Although this is a trade dispute, the ideological attacks we’re subject to require an ideological response,” said McCluskey. For 13 years the unions – while grumpy about Blairite service reforms – were broadly sympathetic to government. Now a Tory-led coalition with radical ambitions to outsource services, break up state monopolies and shrink the public paybill is prompting a level of union anger not seen since Thatcher’s days. If the unions start to get traction, they’ll aim to turn the pension protests into a full-on challenge to the coalition’s agenda. And unless Miliband backs the protests, he too will take union flak.
“I expect support from all wings of this party,” said Kenny. And Dave Prentis charged Labour with enacting reforms that had handed the coalition the policy tools with which to dismantle public services. “Labour built the bridge over which the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are now marching,” he said. “The trade unions are leading this struggle. We’re taking action to protect the services that Labour built up over decades, and it’s Labour’s job not to make it harder for us. But neither Ed Miliband nor Ed Balls will say they support our action, and that can’t be right!”