Tebbit’s Green Paper on “union democracy” has been greeted with howls of indignation from the bureaucratic stooges who dominate the trade unions in Britain. Indeed, the trade unions are quite right to tell the Tories to keep their capitalist paws off independent working class organisations. Workers do not need lessons on democracy from a party which openly exists to preserve minority class privilege.
It cannot be denied, however, that the Green Paper's recommendation that the system of paying the political levy to the Labour Party be changed from contracting out if a worker does not want to pay to contracting in if one does, is in the interest of trade union democracy. It is a fact that very many workers — possibly hundreds of thousands — currently pay the levy because it is too much bother to contract out. In short, the Labour Party is receiving regular payments from many workers who do not vote for it or support it in any way. Attempts to contract out of the levy, which involve no more than signing a form, can be made difficult by those union officials who resent their members’ unwillingness to pay for the Labour Party. Many workers are simply paying the levy for the sake of a quiet life. If this were not so the Labour Party would not be so worried about the prospect of workers having to volunteer to pay. What kind of a party is it that can only survive by conning workers — many of whom oppose it — to supply its funds? Any attempt by the unions to abolish the levy and let workers volunteer dues to whichever political party they wish to support would be democratic.
Seventy-five per cent of Labour Party money is acquired by means of union political funds. In 1927 the Conservative government introduced legislation forcing the contracting in system on the unions. The result of this legislation made clear the real degree of willingness within the unions to support the Labour Party: the number paying the levy fell from 3.3 million in 1926 to 2 million in 1928. By 1934 only 1.85 million union members volunteered to pay the political levy. In 1946 the Labour Party passed a law permitting a return to the undemocratic procedure of contracting out. This led to a sharp increase in those paying the levy from 2.6 million in 1946 to 4.3 million in 1947. Was this because nearly two million trade unionists had been converted into Labour Party supporters and wanted to give it their money? No: it was due to a change in the law initiated by an anti-working class party in order to increase its own funds.
The function of trade unions is to defend and increase the wages or salaries of their members and to attempt to improve conditions of employment. Trade union action is strictly limited by the social laws of the profit system and can never lead to working class emancipation. For unions to support pro-capitalist parties, financially or in any other way, is manifestly against their interests. In supporting Labour’s policies for capitalism, trade unions become involved in disadvantageous deals to make the system work more efficiently. The business of running capitalism is not the political concern of workers: the working class can only advance by abolishing the wages system.
Prior to the 1979-General Election several unions increased their political donations to the Labour Party: the GMWU gave £100,000: the TGWU £150,000; the NUM £100,000; the AUEW £102.400; and the ASTMS £50,000. This was on top of their regular political payments. Were the members of these unions balloted before this money was given away? No, they were not — and they will not be when union funds are wasted once again on helping the Labour Party to deceive the workers in the next General Election. Socialists refuse to pay the political levy and many of us make efforts in our unions to end affiliation to the Labour Party.
The Labour Party’s financial crisis is not unique. Long bankrupt in the field of political ideas, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CP) is apparently on the approach road to financial insolvency; its daily newspaper, the Morning Star, has launched an appeal fund to keep it going. The Star's precursor, the Daily Worker, was the first newspaper in Britain to greet the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as an admirable event. Posing as a friend of the working class, the CP’s newspaper has a long and disgusting record of supporting the dictatorship in Russia, from the days of Stalin to the present. Of the 30,000 Morning Stars printed daily, approximately 15,000 arc sold in Eastern Europe (where workers must be very interested to read about a Communist Party which actually encourages strikes rather than locking up workers who participate in them). This means that the CP is selling only 15,000 Morning Stars in Britain — less than the claimed membership of the CP: 20,000. The CP is appealing to trade unions, such as AEUW-TASS and the TGWU, to buy shares of up to £10,000 in the paper. If these unions provide such aid will they first ballot their members?
The CP has faced grave political problems in recent years, with rival factions (Stalinists v. Eurocommunists) pulling in different directions. It seems that the Stalinist wing (known within the CP as the “tankies”) arc opposed to the occasional criticisms of Kremlin policies which expediency has compelled the CP to make. Mick Costello has recently resigned as the CP’s Industrial Organiser because of his opposition to certain official CP policies, including its involvement in CND which is thought by the “tankies” to be “too anti- Soviet". There are strong rumours around the CP that their next Congress in November will remove the present General Secretary, Gordon McLennan, and appoint a new. more pro-Russian leadership. The effect of all these “vanguard manoeuvres” on the working class will not be very great. Indeed, if the CP goes out of existence it can only be to the benefit of the movement for socialism. Meanwhile, the CP's Gerry Cohen has been given the job of taking the begging bowl around the unions to canvass funds from bureaucrats with a liking for the Kremlin autocracy.
The Tory Party, of course, is never short of a few bob when there is capitalist propaganda to be put out. Its funds are not the result of dues and collections taken by its members; only just over £500,000 a year is paid into Tory funds by its constituency branches (Financial Times, 7 October. 1978). A substantial proportion of Tory funds comes from companies which make political donations either to the Conservative Party itself or to allied bodies which exist either largely as front organisations for Tory political aims. For example, in the financial year before the last General Election. Rank Organisation gave £30,000 to the Tory Party plus £1,000 each to the Centre for Policy Studies and Aims; United Biscuits gave £20,000 to British United Industrialists (BUI); Tate and Lyle gave £10,675 to the Tories, £5,000 to the Centre for Policy Studies and £3,000 to BUI; Taylor Woodrow gave £15,000 to the Tories and another £15,000 to BUI; Allied Breweries gave only £2,310 to the Tories, but then gave £26,500 to BUI. So what are these front organisations? BUI raises approximately £500,000 a year for political purposes: at election time most of this goes into the Conservative Party campaign. Aims was previously known as Aims of Industry and existed as a “pro-free enterprise" pressure group made up of several Tory MPs. The Centre for Policy Studies, of which Margaret Thatcher is President and Keith Joseph Chairman, is a Tory think tank which contributes more than thoughts when election fund donations are required. It causes far less public embarrassment for big companies if they are able to channel their support for Toryism through these front organisations.
Some big businesses are now turning to the latest capitalist party, the SDP. There is some hope that investment in the latest political con-trick will yield returns. At present the SDP is keeping quiet about where it gets its funds from; of course, the millions of pounds worth of media publicity given to the new product — even when it only consisted of four members — was absolutely free.
It remains to be stated that the only Socialist Party in Britain has no grants coming in from trade unions or rich companies; it has no front organisations to collect its money surreptitiously; unlike the so-called Workers Revolutionary Party it has no film star leaders (or leaders of any description) who can afford to invest thousands of pounds in it; there are no foreign governments subsidising the SPGB. Of course, millionaires with nothing better to spend their legally stolen money on are most welcome to donate large amounts of it to us; but we shall not hang about waiting for them. The fuel for the coming workers’ revolution must be provided by the working class itself — there is no better cause.
Steve Coleman
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