Unite union to debate proposals to break Labour link

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/18/scottish-unite-union-propose-breaking-labour-link

Version 0 of 1.

Britain’s largest trade union will debate resolutions calling for a break in its formal link with the Labour party at a special conference in July.

In an escalation of his warnings to Labour, Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, announced that the resolutions had been tabled by branches in Scotland in light of the SNP’s success in attracting working-class voters.

McCluskey said Unite’s link with Labour could be put at risk if the party’s next leader fails to act as the “the voice of organised labour”.

But Lady Prosser, a former deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, which was part of the merger that formed Unite, described McCluskey’s remarks as “daft”.

On Sunday, McCluskey suggested his union would rethink its relationship with Labour if the party elected the wrong leader to succeed Ed Miliband. “It is the challenge of the Labour party to demonstrate that they are the voice of ordinary working people, that they are the voice of organised labour,” he told Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s essential that the correct leader emerges, and that there’s a genuine debate about the direction that we are going in, a rethink. Let’s have the debate,” he added. He said he was not endorsing any candidate.

McCluskey said there was pressure on Unite to break the link with Labour in Scotland after the SNP’s success in winning the support of working-class voters.

“We have a rules conference in my union in July and there’s already a number of resolutions from Scotland seeking to release them from the rule that kind of limits us just to the Labour party,” he said.

But Prosser said on Monday: “I’ve been really cross when I’m hearing Len speak because the union belongs to me as much as it does to him. Nobody has asked me or, as far as I can tell, any of the rest of the membership what their views are about all of this. And frankly the idea that the whole focus of Labour’s offer ought to be around organised labour is just daft.

“Of course I’m absolutely committed to the role of organised labour and the role of trade unions. But if Labour is going to win an election in the UK it has got to get the votes of people in the south of England, many of whom are not trade union members and don’t know the first thing about trade unions and whose lives operate in a rather different fashion. We have to be able to say that a Labour government is going to be there for all kinds of people. Just focusing on one group of is completely silly and what happened on 7 May kind of demonstrates that.”

At the weekend, the Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, announced that he would resign after surviving a move against him supported by Unite, and accused McCluskey of destructive behaviour. McCluskey said he was being portrayed as a “bogeyman”.

Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, attempted to play down the spat. He told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The media have helped and maybe occasionally Len has shot straight from the hip rather than just doing it nicely for the media. Len and Jim have been circling round the OK Corral now for the best part of a decade. If we are going to have the blood-letting that we are seeing I would rather we had in now than in two years’ time. This is the right time to do it.”

Kenny said his union abandoned plans to cut 90% of its funding to Labour in negotiations over a new system for electing the party leader during the last parliament. He said Labour would struggle to fight a national election without union funding.

“Well, it would be the end of how the current political makeup is structured. The Conservatives are able to call on tens of millions of pounds and effectively if you take away the support of the unions it would be difficult to see how the Labour party would fund a national election,” he said.