RMT rejects Labour affiliation – now step up the fight for workers’ political representation

Editorial from issue 998 of the Socialist (England and Wales edition)

The special conference (special general meeting – SGM) of the RMT transport workers’ union on 30 May was an important milestone in the battle to re-establish a political voice for workers after the bleak years of Tony Blair’s New Labour.

The RMT had been formally invited in March to re-affiliate to the Labour Party – from which it had been expelled in 2004 – and a two-month branch consultation took place around a Q&A document produced by party officials responding to issues raised by the union. 

With the results in from the consultation, the RMT national executive committee decided, by nine votes to three, to recommend to the SGM that the union should not re-affiliate at this stage but instead continue with its current political strategy.

This, the recommended motion explained, acknowledges that Labour “has the potential to be a mass party of the working class” since Jeremy Corbyn’s election to the leadership, but that the RMT can best “support, defend and develop the socialist advances that have been made” through its own independent political activity.

This was the position, argued for by the Socialist Party along with others in the broadly-backed Campaign to Defend the RMT’s Political Strategy, which was agreed at the SGM. 

The current political strategy also includes retaining RMT representation on the steering committee of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), co-founded by the late Bob Crow (then RMT general secretary) with the Socialist Party and others. Since 2016 TUSC has contested local elections only against right-wing Labour candidates implementing Tory policies, making sure that the worst Blairite cutters are not left unchallenged.

Jeremy Corbyn

The SGM decision against affiliation was not a rebuff to Jeremy Corbyn or anti-austerity policies. His occupancy of the Labour leadership is a bridgehead for the working class against the capitalists, including their Blairite agents within the party. Building from this bridgehead is the clearest route, at this point, through which workers could achieve a mass party of our own. 

But the RMT was absolutely right not to unconditionally affiliate to an organisation whose structures are still largely those inherited from New Labour, which had neutered the unions’ role within the party. The RMT has far greater leverage to fight for working class political representation with its current strategy than it could have achieved by surrendering its political independence and potentially handing £240,000 a year in affiliation fees (for its full membership) to the party machine.

The RMT’s decision, however, should be a wake-up call to other left-led trade unions, both affiliated and unaffiliated. They must now urgently discuss with the RMT the concrete steps needed to transform Labour into a workers’ party; to restore unions’ collective rights and proportionate weight in candidate selection, policy formation, and the administration of the party locally and nationally. 

Such measures would include mandatory reselection of MPs, with unions having the right to directly nominate candidates onto parliamentary shortlists. Local Campaign Forums, responsible for council candidate panels, should be replaced by a ‘district Labour Party’ structure, with directly elected union branch delegates.

The National Policy Forum, where unions hold just 16% of the votes, should be abolished and policy-making power restored to the party conference. And all expelled socialists and organisations should be readmitted, in a democratic federal arrangement, including the Socialist Party.

If the Labour Party Democracy Review, reporting in September, doesn’t make such a decisive break with Blairism’s organisational legacy, the left-led unions cannot just sit back.

They should insist that Jeremy Corbyn presents his own proposals directly to trade unionists, members and registered supporters like he did in the leadership contests and with a similar public campaign. Then affiliation would offer the prospect to fighting trade unionists of real collective control by workers over their political representatives.

But action is also needed now to convince militant workers that a fundamental break with Blairism has been made politically too. The SGM debate revealed how the experience of right-wing Labour-led councils implementing austerity policies is shaping workers’ perception of the Labour Party and undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity message. 

The RMT has conference policy supporting local councils setting no-cuts budgets by using their reserves and borrowing powers. Yet right-wing Labour councils have now passed three sets of cuts budgets in the period since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader.

This was one of the issues the union raised with the Labour Party in the affiliation negotiations but the officials who drafted the party’s response would not give a straight answer. But why can’t an ‘anti-austerity party’ unequivocally say that its councillors, mayors, and assembly members will not implement austerity?

As RMT delegates gathered for their SGM the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which had re-affiliated to Labour in November 2015 without the negotiation process that the RMT is going through, announced a nine-to-one vote for strike action in the West Midlands in a dispute with the Labour-controlled fire authority over imposed contracts. One action – why doesn’t the national party suspend these alleged Labour councillors unless they back down? – would be worth a thousand ‘alternatives to austerity’ policy papers. 

Unite’s local government section also has policy for no-cuts budgets. The PCS civil servants’ union, whose recent conference decided for a new consultation on political strategy, has opposed Labour-led authorities implementing cuts. They too, alongside the RMT, should be demanding concrete action from Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell. 

Even a pledge by Corbyn and McDonnell that an incoming Labour government would replenish council reserves and underwrite borrowing undertaken to avoid cuts would transform the situation in local government. How would councillors then justify continuing with austerity policies to council workers and local service users? 

It would be anti-austerity politics in action and, if backed up by a mass campaign, could be a potentially terminal challenge to the May government.

The RMT SGM decision was not a rebuff to Jeremy Corbyn but it does contain a warning. The transformation of the Labour Party into New Labour was not one act but a process consolidated over years. Overturning that legacy politically and organisationally and re-establishing Labour as a workers’ party will also, obviously, not be accomplished by one act. 

But it will require a mass movement consciously organised to champion that goal, prepared to take on the representatives of capitalism within the labour movement at every stage. The RMT has confirmed that it is ready for the fight. Now the other left-led unions, and Jeremy Corbyn himself, must step up to the plate.

RMT Socialist Party members report on the RMT SGM

Delegates to the RMT transport union’s special general meeting (SGM) have voted to maintain the union’s current political strategy and not to affiliate to the Labour Party.

The union will develop its existing strategy of supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but the right-wing grip on the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and local councils, together with the absence of real influence for affiliated unions, prevented affiliation at this time.

The different political situation in Scotland also made a proposal for affiliation extremely difficult.

The SGM debate reflected the understanding, on all sides, that Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader opens up the possibility of Labour becoming a genuine mass workers’ party.

The issue of contention was how best to respond to this. The discussion at the SGM was framed by the 2017 annual general meeting where delegates had raised specific concerns.

Not least of these was the question of Scotland. The RMT had been the only union to ballot its members in Scotland before the 2014 independence referendum, coming out for a Yes vote while Labour campaigned for No.

Yet affiliation would mean that the union could only support Labour candidates in Scotland. The majority of Scottish branches and the Scottish RMT opposed affiliation and Scottish delegates explained that, with Labour-led councils carrying out cuts, it is generally still seen to be pushing the same austerity politics as the Tories.

The role of the new ‘Corbynista’ Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, was also highlighted. He has spoken against austerity but he recently voted with the right in Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) vice chair election, denying Corbyn an important ally in the post. He also currently opposes even the right for Scotland to have a second independence referendum.

Other issues outstanding from the 2017 AGM included Labour’s attitude to driver-only operation (DOO) of trains and cuts on London Underground and Transport for London (TfL).

Labour councillors have a majority on the authorities that oversee Merseyrail and Northern Rail, who are implementing DOO. Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, have supported the union’s fight against DOO but many SGM delegates wanted them to go further and pull the councillors and Mersey Mayor into line.

London SGM delegates raised similar points about Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan’s cuts on TfL. Instead of publicly opposing cuts and demanding funding from the government, Khan is enthusiastically implementing them. Yet there are no calls from the leadership or Labour left for him to shift his stance.

Can RMT members on the tube really be asked to support, let alone contribute towards, Khan’s next election campaign?

The SGM heard from delegates who supported affiliation and, without question, there would be some advantages to be had such as the right of affiliated union branches to vote on whether to run a ‘trigger ballot’ selection process in local parties (though only after the NEC agrees a timetable for this). 

Overblown claims

But most delegates felt the claims of the pro-affiliation campaign were overblown. A seat on the NEC is not guaranteed and the RMT could only expect 16 delegates at Labour Party conference (less if we didn’t affiliate our full membership) out of 2,700 or so.

On balance, delegates voted to spend RMT’s political fund on candidates who support RMT policy and not dilute that across the PLP and right-wing Labour councillors.

RMT must now unite around the agreed SGM outcome. A serious campaign with other left unions could transform the Labour Party root and branch and open the way for possible affiliation.

But there are also concerns that proponents of affiliation may seek to bring RMT closer to the position of the majority of Labour councillors and MPs rather than seeking to transform the party.

It is noticeable that the union’s public pronouncements on Welsh Labour privatising border railways have shifted alarmingly in recent weeks.

In August 2017 the RMT general secretary wrote to the Welsh First Minister and said: “I am staggered to find that it is a Welsh Labour government that is privatising Network Rail’s infrastructure and is acquiescing with a Westminster Tory government in the piecemeal privatisation and break up of Network Rail.”

But by May 2018 the tone had changed markedly: “RMT policy is for a national integrated railway under public ownership and the Welsh government has made it clear that this is their aspiration as well if they did not have to work under the pro-privatisation legislative straight jacket imposed by the UK government.”

Any attempt to soften RMT’s own political position to allow for affiliation would be disastrous. This is also true of RMT’s industrial position.

A political strategy to deliver a Corbyn-led government must never become a substitute for militant industrial action on DOO, tube cuts, seafarers’ rights or any other fight we become involved in.