OAD LEFTS end the political levy

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tried to drive home the division between industrial affairs and politics so that injunctions were granted against the POEU fighting to protect its members against the threat privatisation posed to their jobs and conditions on the grounds that their dispute was a political one.

This last point is vital when Mrs Thatcher said 'What would please me immensely would be if the TUC were not and the unions were not a part of the Labour Party or the Labour Party a part of the trade union movemen. inal conneckun 1 maniamont That nannantinn T must say is wrong." For capital in today's crisis the connection is a real problem.

Compared with Britain's competitors, its working class movement has a major advantage - the organic and endurunions and their own political link between Britain's party. True, that party has in the past successfully. integrated Britain's workers into the perspectives of capital. Its success in doing so has been of decreasing value. World recession has changed the name of the game.

In: 1964 and 1974, Labour governments failed to satisfy its constituency or modernise ¡capital. But important sections of activists were radicalised.

It Bennism should seize control of the Labour Party and this were to be accompanied by a left surge in the unions, the safety mechanism of turn and turn about by two parties, both in different ways and to different degrees trustworthy lieutenants of capital, might be disrupted.

One answer to this threat has been the attempt to politically disorganise the labour movement ana bulla a secona capital- ._..].i1 ist party as the replication and natural development of Labour's cold war right wing. It has been accompanied by a legal offensive intended to weaken both party and unions by weakening the organic links that exist between them.

This is the aim of the political levy provisions in the 1983 Trade Union Bill. Not only will they tinancially undermine the • 11 iLLabour Party. They could reinforce the right wing tendencies within the unions and open the way for the SDP and coalitionism. The existing overtures from Chapple and Duffy, and cautious Murray's distancing from the Labour Party is an empirical reflex to get into Downing Street.

A situation where several important unions disaffiliated from Labour could turn these straws into bricks. It could be a major step along the road Thatcher wants where unions are less involved in political issues and less involved in class issues where they are more involved with the interests of their employers, their horizons bounded by the welfare of the enterprise in which they work, their responses conditioned by the needs of capitalist rationality.

US model

Ii could be a step in the direction of the US model where unions bargain sporadically with the representatives capitalist parties. It could be an important step towards weaker unions on the US model.

That is why the political levy provisions are a vital challenge to the unions and specincauy to 1 - 1L - --17=the Broad Left. It is why we must devote a considerable part of our energies to campaigning against them.

What exactly is involved? The government, having now received. TUC agreement to police the existing system by which workers have a right to contract out of paying the political levy will not change this into a position where they would be automatically exempt and will have to opt in.

Instead unions will have to hold a secret ballot of all their members every ten years to decide whether or not they will be able to have a political tuna. Any expenditure on political objectives has to come out of a special political fund. Unions cannot use their ordinary general funds for political purposes. Unions will have until March 1986 to hold ballots. Any union that does not get a 51% majority in the ballot will be open to legal action by any member if it maintains a political fund. Any such member will be able to go to court and the court will then make an order against the union, outlawing any political expenditure for the next decade.

Funds

Things are made even more difficult by another clause in the Bill which tightens the restrictions on unions using money from their general funds. If unions, for example, finance the publication or distribution of any publication, film or advertisement which taken as a whole seeks to persuade any person to vote for a political party or candidate then that finance has to come out of a union's political fund, not out of its general fund. We know the imaginative inclination of the judges and we know their predilections. Campaigns by the POEU against privatisation or by NALGO or the CPSA against cuts or by educational unions against the vandalism of learning (remember the vote for education' campaign around the last election?) could easily be read as falling within that clause.

As unions like NALGO and the CPSA do not have political funds, they would simply not be able to run such campaigns. And the Tories hope unions like the POEU may not have such funds after the ballots and will likewise be disqualified.

The position looks something like this. At one end of the scale are unions in which a large proportion of members pay the political levy and which might therefore be expected to gain the required 51% to keep their fund in the Tory ballot. 98% of TGWU and NUPE members pay the political levy. 96% of NUR members and 92% of USDAW members also pay.

Then there are more middling unions such as AUEW (65%), UCATT (65%) and TASS (58%).

At the other end of the spectrum there are organisations like SOGAT (44%); the NGA (42%), and ASTMS (30%) whose prospects in a ballot look distinctly more ropey.

Unsuccessful

A Gallup Poll carried out recently for Channel Four showed that 53% of trade unionists did not want their union to affiliate to the Labour Party. Only 36% did favour the link.

The recent unsuccessful ballots in NALGO and the CPSA show the problems that will exist in many unions. A MORI survey in 1982 showed that a majority of members in the TGWU, GMBATU and AUEW were in favour of Labour Party affiliation while a majurity in the EETPU, NUR and USDAW opposed it. Figures for all 63 unions with political funds at the 1nd of 1982 show that 77% of compi ago.

Yet Labor from deper overw funds witho tion, i The years to be paign sad c recen ation been shoul ballot memk the cc The ferent conte shoul selve: spent every impo: from are, ' or n need not d in pol Mo have If t purpi politi shoul of uni Thi interf this i which being aim but o how : ler wants to separate unions an‹ members pay the levy ared with 82% five years : in 1982 almost 80% of the ir Party's income came the unions. The Party ids on the unions for the helming majority of its .. At things stand today, ut the unions' contribuit would be bankrupt. ere is time. We have two • But there is not a moment lost in mounting a cam. against the Bill. It is a omment on the retreat of recent years that non-conaDor with the Bill has not really raised - that unions d not participate in the is but should wait for bers to drag them before Jurts. e need to resist state interce should be raised in the xt that trade unionists d be able to decide thems on what their money is : with no state veto and that day that passes shows how ssible it is to disentangle IS' industrial objectives their political aims. Unions whether the Tories like it st, political bodies. They , in the 198Us, to deepen liminish their involvement litics at every level. reover, dissidents cannot their cake and eat it. he majority decide that the ›ses of the union require a cal fund, on what grounds d they be entitled to opt out ion policy? e issue of boycotting state ference must be raised in context, pointing out that Is, unlike big business over a there are no controls, are ; singled out not with the of deepening democracy if curtailing it by stopping : unionists having a say in a major political part operMurr moves to distance TUC from JOHN HARRIS ates.

However it is likely that all unions will opt to accept the ballots and that the light will have to be made within the state framework. If a union boycotts the ballot, the court order will not simply order it to ballot but will prohibit political expenditure forthwith.

Most unions won't take that chance. To urge boycott once that decision is taken would be sectarian and would ensure defeat.

All Broad Lefts must put this issue at the very centre of their activities in the context of a fight against the Tory laws in general. But we cannot simply defend the status quo. We have to take up, whilst arguing against state interference, the abuses of a system in which unions purchase Labour Party votes according to the financial and political considerations ol their leaders, not the numbers ol members paying the levy and where those block votes are wielded by small groups , unan. swerable to and unelected the members.

Ve must campaign for mor noividual cabour rarty mem bers. We must explain and argue in the workplace the advantages of the Labour Party to union members. We must campaign in the Party to ensure those advantages are real. We must campaign in the unions to democratise the block vote. We must campaign in the Party to democratise its mechanism and turn it outwards towards the workers. We must use the fight against King's Bill to help us in transforming the labour movement. The newly-launched Labour Coordinating Committee campaign is a start. BLOC should give it every support so that it can be extended and deepened.

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