The New Dark Age

'Socialism or Barbarism'

Too little too late?

2 July 2012

Too little, too late?

This from today’s Independent:

Left-wing threat for Labour MPs who fail to fight coalition cuts – the independent 2 july

By Andy McSmith
The Labour Party may be challenged in parliamentary elections by left-wing candidates backed by a major trade union for the first time in its 100 year history.

The 292,000-strong Public and Commercial Services Union … voted four to one in favour of using union funds to back anti-austerity candidates.

This means union-backed candidates could stand against sitting Labour MPs who are perceived to have supported the coalition’s cuts. blah-blah…

BTW, the Indie does the usual media hatchet job on the union and its president, Mark Serwotka who “was a member of a small revolutionary Marxist group when he was young…”. Well now that you’ve been prepped, the issue itself, unions acting independently in support of their members, can be conveniently dumped.

The final para is the nail in the coffin of PCS union where we read,

“The change [in the union’s actions] was backed by 78 per cent of those who took part in the ballot, conducted by post and online. But a low turnout of about 20 per cent meant the move was actually endorsed by about one member in six.”

Did the Independent end its coverage of this year’s local election, where we had a turnout of about 30 per cent, with something similar? Nope. Low turnouts are okay if they reflect the status quo but not if they’re from the Left.

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barovsky

One response to “Too little too late?”

  1. Jerry Spring Avatar
    Jerry Spring

    Serwotka Looking Back?

    At least one of the old Trade Unions, having lost it’s traditional industrial base to the neo-liberalism of the Conservative/Labour governmental coalition of the UK, is now trying to build a base in our constituencies by inviting locals to join the Union. It is, of course, all of part of the notion that the Trade Unions are the leadership of the working class and workers should, therefore, continue to vote for the Labour Party, the party of the Trade Unions.

    Not quite so for Mark Serwotka, leader of the small Public and Commercial Services Union, which is a big funder of the Labour Party. His leadership recently succeeded in getting a balloted majority to endorse the using of union funds to back anti-austerity candidates and, presumably, the funds that go to anti-austerity candidates will not be going into the coffers of the Labour Party or, will the PCS funding of the Labour Party remain at the same level?

    Either way, at this stage, it seems to be simply a matter of putting pressure on the Labour Party to introduce reforms that are in the interests of organised labour as was done in respect to the Liberal Party in the 19th Century, that is, until the Unions decided to go for direct representation through the Labour Party and that resulted in 100 years of reformism at home, colonial interventions and occupations abroad, as well as the inter-imperialist wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45.

    Or is there some expectation that the activist Coalition of Resistance against austerity with its mix of ideological, political and organisational positions will, nevertheless, manage to form a foundation for an alternative to the Labour Party?

    One thing for sure, with any potential revolutionary leadership snarled up in the present farce of factions and nothing outside those factions in sight, such an alternative would certainly be, like Labour, ideologically reformist to the core.

    So I suppose it is a case of hedging the bets and marking time.

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