REAL LIVES Political fund ballot Nowhere to hide
Politics affects everyone, everywhere, whether we like it or not
Pick up any paper, turn on any news programme, listen into any conversation in the local café or pub and you will hear politics being discussed. The people discussing it may not always recognise it as such and if you ask them, they may well tell you that they’re not interested in politics. In fact if you ask most people if they trust politicians, most will say no!
The business on everyone’s lips at present is Starbucks. If we listen to their press statements you would think they were almost destitute, yet we’re still asked to pay £3 for a cup of coffee.
Sometimes common sense overrules what the Daily Mail tells us. If we asked a hundred 16 year olds whether they thought Starbucks made a profit last year in the UK, we would most certainly find 95 per cent thought they did. This is not based on an understanding of the economy, a detailed knowledge of their books or from reading their accountants’ reports, but from two simple factors: the fact when we make a coffee at home it costs us pennies and the fact there is a Starbucks on every high street with new outlets opening regularly.
If we asked those same young people whether they were interested in politics 95 per cent may well say no. Yet the conclusion they’ve reached around Starbucks’ profits is based on an analysis which reaches to the very heart of politics. This is the real politics of how wealth is created and how it is distributed. The Starbucks issue can be further developed into looking at the low wages and casual employment contracts used in relation to their workers. But real politics is also about how people can influence change and the actions of eg UK Uncut, show us how building and exercising a collective voice can create real change.
It’s no great surprise that people are turned off politics with the lack of trust created during the expenses scandal – an issue which did far more harm to Labour than the Tories, as people generally had higher expectations of honesty from Labour politicians. The Lib-Dem’s complete betrayal of all their pre-election policies in 2010 served to further distance people from the political process.
During the last Tory government, as one of the measures introduced to curtail the activities of trade unions, the political fund was introduced. The law says each union must ballot on the existence of a political fund and re-ballot every 10 years and certain political activity such as encouraging people to vote for, or against a particular political party would be outlawed – unless paid for out of a fund. This spring will see Unite ballot every member over this issue.
We could take the view that the government didn’t want people to think or care about politics, much rather we concern ourselves with why Christopher Maloney failed to sing at the final of X Factor or what the royals were thinking of naming Kate Middleton’s baby. But why does Unite need a political voice?
It was the combined actions of government and employers at the start of the 20th century which saw unions recognise the need for a political voice for workers in addition to our industrial voice. Unions found themselves in court at risk of bankruptcy as a result of politicians altering legislation.
Our movement created the Labour party, a party for workers, to voice the concerns of ordinary people. But where is that much needed voice today? When people are facing the biggest assault in decades, why are we
BY BARRY FAULKNER
not hearing the clear sound of Labour arguing to protect our workplaces and our communities?
It is up to us within the trade union movement and particularly Unite to re- connect with Labour and to ensure Labour re-connects with working people, their families and communities.
Labour stands on average 10 points ahead of the Tories in the polls but in the current economic climate with the emergence of food banks in every town and city, finding their voice would be likely to place it 20 points ahead or more. Unite recognises there is an alternative to austerity, we must build our understanding of our alternative economic visions which involve no cuts and we need to argue this in the workplace, community and most importantly within the Labour Party.
The single narrative of austerity has become the only game in town and we need to smash this view. Politics is about real issues and the way in which those real issues affect us all in our daily lives. Unite community members have been organising around issues such as workfare, welfare cuts and the NHS, all key political battles. In Southampton our local government workers adopted a political strategy to oust the Tory administration which reduced their wages and helped return a Labour council on a commitment to restore them.
So we can either fool ourselves into believing politics really doesn’t matter or we can wake up and smell the tax dodgers and start to create a political noise which will rock the traditional consensus and wake us all up to the vision of a better society, which radical political change could and must develop.
20 uniteWORKS January/February 2013
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