Political Funds and donations to the Labour Party are all the rage this week. The Falkirk selection process and others much like it have been thrown like a beach ball into the middle of a football pitch. So at a time of grinding poverty and misery, with lives and communities in utter turmoil we are being pulled into a debate about the selection of Labour candidates and the role of unions in that. Miliband has been fronted and his instinct was to say `you`re half right`.
There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.
Is anyone really surprised by the audacious scale of ‘over-billing’ and ‘phantom offenders’ that have led to G4S being referred to the serious fraud office? It looks pretty damning that at worse this is serious fraud and at best downright incompetence on the part of G4S unable to get their invoicing married up to work actually carried out. But this unveils the real problem with outsourcing.
Remember when nurses, teachers, firefighters and municipal workers crashed the economy and took billions in bonuses and bailouts?. No? Me either.
Last weekend Rodney Bickerstaffe, UNISON's first elected General Secretary, gave an inspirational and entertaining speech at the UNISON Eastern Region's 20 years Birthday Celebrations. Watch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWCv5VhPZtA
Statement by Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary: 'UNISON has always given its members the choice of opting in to its affiliated political fund, that gives them a say in the democratic processes of the Labour Party, or of opting in to the General Political Fund, independent of any political party. Our processes are democratic and transparent. UNISON has never operated the arrangement whereby we pay Labour Party membership fees for new members.
To those of us who remember when the local Labour Party CLP when it was the basis of Labour Party democracy, recent events in Falkirk are like Madelines. They send us
a la recherche du temps perdu....
BB (before Blair) the important decisions about local matters, about how the party should organise , about the policies that should be followed, not just in the local arena but nationally were the subject of intense debate in a CLP management committee.
I purchased some insurance the other day and when the invoice came through the company had deducted a £1.20 donation to the Conservative Party. I tried of course to opt out and get my £1.20 back but they said I had no choice. The same happened on a trip to Top Shop where I bought an overpriced skirt for one of my teenage daughters. This time they took off 80 pence for the Tories.
Following
Ed Miliband's announcement that individual trade unionists will be required to opt in to Labour Party contributions various journalists
(FT gossip columnist Jim Pickard) and union leaders
(Len McCluskey) are spinning that all is intact with union political funds and that opting out will remain. Nothing could be further from the truth. Miliband's unilateral announcement and its aftermath not only demonstrated the subordinate position of affiliated unions. It also paved the way for implementation of the
Sir Christopher Kelly review (notably titled 'ending the big donor culture' as per Coalition Agreement) - of which legislation to introduce opting out of union political funds was the major sticking point to the extent that Margaret Becket
produced a dissenting report.
As GMB's
Paul Kenny has correctly indicated, following yesterday's panic measure Labour is set to lose the lion's share of union funding. Now it will have no alternative but to sign up to the Kelly recommendations - having sold the pass on the principle of opting out how could it do otherwise when the Con Dem’s decide to legislate? State funding is the ultimate aim of yesterday’s statement. Everyone needs to face up to that fact and the historic implications for unions being pushed out to the margins of party politics as in the USA.
'There'll always be a place for unions, but not as part of a political party' said former Tory MP Matthew Parris on Radio 5 Live this morning. Eloquently summing up the historic change about to take place in the Labour Party - which Parris of course commended.
