The 1992 TUC Congress represented an historic low point for trade unionism. The right wing had clearly achieved a crushing dominance in the trade unions. The merging of the AEU and EETPU, to produce the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU), created an immense and powerful right-wing block within the British trade union movement. The merger was in effect an EETPU take-over, resulting in the dismantling of the democratic structures of the engineering union, and the consolidation of the Neanderthal right wing. Despite resistance from a number of unions, the EETPU had been allowed back into the TUC fold via the AEEU merger. Their past attempts to pull together a rival right-wing TUC, composed of the EETPU, the AEU, the UDM and other such “employer-friendly” bodies had come to nothing. Nevertheless, the new AEEU acted as a right-wing Trojan horse within the organised labour movement, and a focal point for business unionism. The leaders of the AEEU, the extreme right of the TUC, simply expressed openly and crudely what the others thought and talked about in private. They were all very much wedded to “New Realism” and the capitalist system. So degenerate had they become, that CBI boss Howard Davies was allowed to address the TUC Congress, while strikers, such as those of Burnstall’s in Smethwick, were left to stand outside.
This right-wing tendency in the trade unions was further reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crisis within the Communist Parties internationally. The bourgeois apologists and their shadows within the labour movement portrayed the collapse of the Berlin Wall as a “victory” of capitalism and the “defeat” of socialism. In fact, the demise of Stalinism was a defeat, not for socialism, but for a bureaucratic totalitarian regime that was a mere caricature of socialism. This caused a layer of ex-lefts and former CP members to make common cause with the right wing to further their own ambitions and careers as Labour “advisers”. The ex-Stalinist Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown’s former spin-doctor, typified this new creature. They simply jumped ship and moved over to a pro-capitalist, pro-market position, with the ease of a man moving from standard class to first class on a train. This precipitated an even further shift to the right in the TUC, which in turn, was mirrored by a similar shift in the Labour Party. This itself is sufficient proof that the trade unions are the key to the developments within the Labour Party, for better or worse. This was no accident, but reflected the complicated objective processes unfolding deep within society.
Under pressure from the ruling class and the capitalist media, John Smith, the new party leader, sought to weaken the Labour Party’s links with the trade unions. A number of union leaders, fearing political marginalisation, resisted this attack. It was one thing to support Labour’s right wing, but this was going too far! At the 1992 Labour Party conference, John Edmonds and Bill Morris led the battle to preserve the union link, and the original One Member One Vote proposal (OMOV) was voted down by a clear majority. But this was not the end of the matter. As a concession to the trade union leaders (who in turn were under pressure from the ranks), John Smith had promised the TUC conference that the key priorities for a forthcoming Labour government would be full employment and the introduction of a minimum wage. This was the price for the union leaders’ acceptance of the new rule changes, which, in the end, they dutifully swallowed. A compromise version of OMOV, sponsored by NUPE and the RMT, was narrowly passed after intense pressure on delegates, and the MSF delegation breaking its union mandate.
The 1993 TUC Congress witnessed the retirement of the lacklustre Norman Willis as general secretary and the emergence of the arch “moderniser” John Monks. Monks had risen through the TUC machine and he now emerged as the well-groomed Congress House bureaucrat, a mirror image of the new dominant Bourgeois Tendency in the Labour Party. In tandem with Smith, he now worked to “modernise” the TUC by, among other things, distancing the trade unions from the Labour Party and inviting Tories and CBI leaders to address TUC Congresses. This sorry spectacle represented the pinnacle of “New Realism”, at a time when the workers were desperately looking for an alternative to Toryism and class collaboration.
At this time, the 1.4 million-strong Unison was created, following a merger between public sector unions NALGO, NUPE and COHSE. As only NUPE and COHSE were affiliated to the Labour Party, and the “white collar” NALGO had strongly resisted any link with Labour, the leadership pushed through a proposal to establish a political fund with two sections. In doing so, rather than facing up to the political arguments, the opportunity was lost to set up a single Political Fund. Only one of these sections is affiliated to the Labour Party, the Labour Link or Affiliated Political Fund (APF) as it is known. The other fund, the General Political Fund, pays for campaigning work but cannot be used for Party political purposes. Members then have to choose into which fund they pay their political levy. Currently around 570,000 members out of 1.3 million pay into the APF.
Within the union, the APF has its own structures and conferences. Only Unison members who are also individual members of the Labour Party can hold positions within the APF, or be candidates for key regional and national bodies. As a result of the low participation, the body was subsequently captured and controlled by the union’s right wing. Instead of fighting for union policy within the Labour Party, it used the APF to promote right-wing Labour policies within the union. They have been able to hold on to this position up until the present time, but this has reached its limits as subsequent events have shown. The union is changing, and the wind of change has now begun to blow within the ranks of the APF.