Letter from London: You Don’t Get Me, I’m Part of the Union

Setting out afresh on a journey through UK unions, I have more questions to ask than answers. However, the questions feel real and I suspect will not go away without real change.

In the recent budget, the Labour government managed to park a huge amount of money back into the NHS—a staggering £23 billion—yet received zero credit for this. Certainly not from the country’s widely right-wing press, where something designed for 90% of the population I suppose was always going to be met loudest by the remaining 10%.

Was this a case of weak communications or will every battle from now on be portrayed as a losing one? Especially with the twin missiles of both the Tory and Reform UK parties trained on Labour.

The same can be said of the unions. Do they not suffer from poor communications too? Or are they destined through a culture of assumed intransigence to be their own worst enemy anyway?

Despite having successfully suspended London Tube strike action recently, the unions gained no plaudits for this at all. What can be so wrong with an organisation whose main purpose in life is to maintain or improve the working conditions of its members? Why are unions so derided, or worse plain ignored?

There is much that remains unclear. Even if we establish that unions are the victims of poor communications and a right-wing press, it is still possible their current leadership may not be up to scratch.

Many here in the UK are familiar with RMT (The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) boss Mick Lynch and his vow to ‘seize control’ of the economy. This was like red meat to his many detractors. Or was he deliberately trying to smoke them out, in which case this may have made sense?

What about ASLEF (The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) calling the recent budget a ‘genuinely groundbreaking agreement’ at the same time as the country is still reeling from it? Did this denote a sea change? More progression, less rancour? Or is that part of the problem?

Much of the press over that suspended Tube Strike action zeroed in on the proposed four-day working week (more hours, less days), rather than the easing of the burden on London’s millions of commuters.

Accusations of union antiquatedness however are well founded with an outfit like Northern Trains. On top of its regular criticism for poor service and constant cancellations, it uses old-fashioned fax machines to message its delays, creating exactly the sort of problem for commuters which any new technology would prohibit. Basically it is union refusal to agree to the shift from fax machines that is the problem—Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is reported to be exasperated by this.

Presumably this kind of rigidity is not supported by David Ward of CWU (The Communication Workers Union) whose own Royal Mail staff are now calling for a stake in their business. Do the weekly podcasts and videos put out by CWU enhance or belittle their case? And what exactly is happening with the Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský who bought Royal Mail?

Lately, Lloyds Banking Group managed to create union ire by wanting to curb union power at the bank ahead of the new workers’ rights overhaul by Labour. Basically they want union membership for higher paid workers stopped and the introduction instead of ‘people forums’. Will we be seeing more of this?

Or is the TUC by calling the budget a ‘vital first step’ taking a vital first step itself towards a rehabilitation of the unions? Conversely, is aligning itself to a traditionally sympathetic Labour government always going to be there as part of the problem?

Writer Grace Blakeley makes the interesting point that 50 years ago young men concerned about inflation eroding their wages would have joined a union: ‘Today, they put all their savings in crypto and vote for tax cuts in case they become billionaires,’ she posted recently on social media.

She added that maybe the communities in which people used to come together to discuss issues and develop collective solutions have been so destroyed by the actions of both parties ‘that they feel they have to confront their economic problems on their own.’

Today we are seeing many farmers turning on their union—the 45,000-strong NFU (The National Farners’ Union)—after it limited several planned protests, including one in London on Nov 19, which they decided to cap to just 1,800. Farmers then threatened to forcibly shut down the whole of London.

John McTernan, former aide to Tony Blair, went on to call on the new government to do to farmers therefore what Thatcher did to miners. He may have had a point, though clumsily made, as the notion of farmers being somehow above the law has been allowed to germinate in a nation viewed for so long through a Tory lens.

In essence, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves in the October budget announced that farming assets worth more than £1 million would be liable from next year for inheritance tax at 20 per cent. McTernan’s most contentious—and cruel—line was that we ‘don’t need small farmers.’

Let’s go back to the beginning. Any truly historic reference to unions in the UK today must come with a respectful nod to the Jarrow March and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Such moments in any nation’s history are as engraved for some in their psyche as much as any feats on the battlefield.

Was it a disrespect to the workforce therefore which was responsible for the famous Red Wall Hartlepool by-election victory in 2021 won by the Tories for the first time in decades? It is certainly now Reform UK’s belief that these are seats rich for their own picking. Nigel Farage has just said: ‘The Red Wall voters will never trust the Conservatives again.’

Such political upheaval however cannot be blamed on unions alone, even when tied at the time to what had been seriously dwindling respect for Labour. So will Labour continue to claw back this support?

While right-wing parties feast on the disgruntlement of a group for so long a plank of Labour support, there was a not dissimilar error made by the left in believing all recent rioters in England for example were right-wing, not to mention the disarray over what constitutes ‘working class’.

Of course, unions as a concept can and do work well. Even our 75 year-old Nato is considered a union, perhaps the most successful of all time, though presumably recalibrating itself after the election victory of Donald Trump.

Like it or not, get rid of our unions even today and whole elements of chaos will ensue. Mussolini in 1924 said no altogether to any kind of non-fascist work union and look what happened to him.

They say there are three main reasons for their general decline—globalisation, employer concentration (how many large employers exist in a labour market), and technological change—not forgetting the unionisation of the self-employed.

In the end, though, will unions suffer most from the growing fashionable and aggressive belief in the US—echoing Steve Bannon—that liberalism and communism have ruined a more natural and sacred order of things? As if a kind of relentless march towards dog eat dog is what is taking place now.

Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s most influential foreign policy adviser, recently said that the Social Democratic government in Germany and the Labour government in the UK were now propping up structures that ‘your own constituencies are sceptical of. It’s an uncomfortable place to be.’

As I say, far more questions than answers. What still however seems to be needed now is for unions to evolve. The question is how?

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