Miliband follows in Tories' footsteps with opt-in plans

Whichever way he dresses it up, Ed Miliband’s plan for trade union members to opt-in to paying a subscription to Labour is an historic break with the organisations that formed the party and have since provided the bulk of its funds.

At present, members of unions affiliated to Labour have a small part of their subscriptions automatically transferred to the party’s coffers. They have to opt-out of paying the political levy if they don’t want to support Labour financially.

Labour was a somewhat reluctant creation in 1900 of a trade union movement that wanted its own representation in parliament. Now Miliband is effectively breaking that link. And he’s not the first to try to impose an opt-in. The Tories did it – over 85 years ago.

In 1927, in a vindictive piece of revenge in the wake of the 1926 General Strike, the Tory government led by Stanley Baldwin enacted just such a law. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act not only made general strikes illegal.

The Act also banned unions from automatically passing subs over to Labour, replacing it with the same opting-in proposal that Miliband is making. So now he is doing the Tories’ dirty work for them after they made hay over the Falkirk selection farrago.

Labour has called in the police following allegations that its main funder, the Unite union, was recruiting members to the party without their knowledge in order to get its nominee adopted as the candidate for the upcoming by-election.

Back in 1927, Labour and the Trades Union Congress fiercely opposed the Tory legislation. On May 2, the shadow leader of the Commons, J.R. Clynes, a former leader of the party, told MPs:

We say that to reduce the trade unions with regard to their political income to the level of making each man initiate the payment of contribution, without the educative effect of any prior collective action—[Interruption]. I know that there are many Members in this House who would not have them educated — without the educative effect of prior organised action, would be to make a mockery of any political liberty whatever, or of the use of any funds for political purposes.

He said attacked the legislation as a  “malignant endeavour on the part of the Government to back up organised capital in the struggles with organised labour” and pledged that Labour would repeal the legislation when in power. The trade unions had to wait nearly 20 years before that could happen.

How times change! Labour has since been transformed into party that embraces corporate-driven globalisation – aka as free-market or neo-liberal capitalism – beginning with the abandoning of the famous socialist Clause 4.  

While the Tories are free to take money from business, the trade unions, by contrast, are viewed by Miliband and those around him as “sectional interests”. Miliband’s party gets £8 million a year from union subs. This will plummet if his plans are adopted.

This is not “mending” the relationship with unions affiliated to Labour. This is not reforming it. Miliband’s proposal is effectively ending it.

However long it takes to get through, Miliband’s declaration of war on the unions is designed to impress the middle-classes and business, to show that  “responsible capitalism” is his only policy. So Labour will go on backing spending cuts and attacks on welfare while offering only token opposition to ConDem attacks on the NHS, education and human rights.

Two things become clearer as a result. Representation of workers’ interests in parliament through the Labour Party is a dead duck. And that’s official. Secondly, parliament itself is an arena now totally dominated by and subordinate in every sense to the requirements of a capitalist system in deep economic and financial crisis.

New democratic forms that go beyond the limitations of representation, that deal with the question of power, of who rules Britain, are therefore urgent questions. We should thank Miliband for prompting us to look beyond Labour and a discredited, corporatist political system.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Charities row about venal self interest

The Coalition’s proposal to limit tax relief on charitable donations to £50,000 per year or 25% of a donor’s income has touched a raw nerve within the government’s natural constituencies – so called “wealth creators” and those who back the notion of “the big society”.

At present there is no limit on the amounts that can be donated to charities, thus making it possible to avoid paying tax altogether. One thousand millionaires currently pay 30% or less tax while nearly one in 10 people earning more than £10 million a year pay less than 20% in income tax, according to the Treasury.

Outraged members of the rich list have joined up to complain that the Budget proposal would “deter future donors” in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph. Infringing their “right” to use their wealth as they see fit is a restriction on the “liberties” of the rich and the super rich. To paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies, “they would say, that wouldn’t they?”

The idea that you can appear righteous and generous by giving away some of your wealth to the worthy poor and other selected “good causes” goes back to Victorian times and has long been the foundation of old Toryism as well as liberalism.

Philanthropists like Joseph Rowntree combined Quaker beliefs to build model housing schemes and fund research into social issues. Others raised money for public parks.

But the notion of selfless generosity has gone out of the window in favour of venal self-interest. Offsetting tax by making donations to charity is a convenient way for millionaires to minimise their tax payments. In fact Osborne’s proposal would only affect those giving more than £200,000, so it hardly “punishes” anyone but the super rich.

The web of connections between charities, politicians, corporate and banking interests are more often than not incestuous. Former prime minister Tony Blair, for example, has let it be known that "this is absolutely the right moment for government to do all it can to promote philanthropy; and certainly nothing to harm it."

Not too surprising for a man whose Faith Foundation pays six figure salaries to its staff. And his wife Cherie Blair’s Foundation for Women is backed by top US banks, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and Goldman Sachs.

Behind the pious phrases of “giving back to the community” is not only greed but a deep-seated animosity to the notion of a state that can tap into the income of the rich to provide any kind of benefit to the rest of society including the health service, pensions, education and all the rest.

So why has the coalition made this move? The globalisation of industry and banking combined with tax avoidance, growing unemployment and an aging population has significantly reduced state revenues. So little surprise that the state is desperate to claw back tax money while giving the appearance – and that’s all it is – that “we’re all in together”.

But fear not, ConDem ministers! Shining knight Ed Miliband has come riding to the rescue. Trying to outflank the coalition with a demagogic attack on “big money” funding of political parties he has proposed a £5,000 cap on donations. This makes Osborne’s £50,000 limit on charitable donations look like a tax bonanza to the rich.

Miliband equates trade union donations with those given to the Tories by capitalists and bankers. This is really reactionary and shows what contempt the Labour leader has for ordinary workers. His proposed cap also opens the door for Tories to demand that union members in affiliated unions opt in to paying the political levy to Labour (at moment unionists have to opt out – i.e. make a conscious decision not to pay).

Yes, they are all in together – the major political parties, that is. That’s why so many people are deciding to hold on to their precious votes until there’s something better to use them on.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Assemblies taking off

The People’s Assembly Network (PAN) event held in London at the weekend took place against a dramatic background of mass actions against existing authorities from Wisconsin, USA, to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

In Cairo two demonstrators were killed by the military police and many more injured, while in Madison, Wisconsin, trade unionists and their supporters met in a people’s assembly. On a smaller scale, protesters camped out overnight in Trafalgar Square demanding the right to peaceful protest.

As a powerful greeting to the London meeting from the Wisconsin Wave People’s Assembly said clearly: “Like all of you, we understand the just cause and moral imperative of defending our democratic traditions, our people, and our principles against a coordinated attack by corporate elites and the politicians they own. And, like all of you, we know that we have to do much more than fight back. We also have to advance a genuine people’s movement that values every human being and insists on essential public services and human rights.”

This year, the message noted, opened with the toppling of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, which inspired the mass resistance in Wisconsin to the attacks on public sector workers and their union rights.

PAN co-convenor Mark Barrett, said that assemblies were “not unions, not parties or pressure groups but an inclusive organisational strategy - the means to build permanent, democratic, city-wide and rural structures in various communities around the world, which can have a multiplicity of functions. They can unite for a common alternative around the world – permanent institutions of the ‘common’.”

A researcher on social movements said it was important to see assemblies not only as “reacting” to the existing authorities but as a way to the assertion of a new form of power.

Others, including members of the Project for a Participatory Society UK, saw Assemblies as platforms for encouraging social participation and as a way of developing alternatives to the capitalist system of production.

A World to Win member said that the role of assemblies was to express the self-determination of people, to be a voice for the voiceless and to develop mass forms of leadership. “They are not a left thing or a right thing, but a democratic thing in the light of mass popular dissatisfaction with state structures and the absence of a democratic voice.”

London activist, Navid, said that assemblies could be structures for combining the ideologies of the left and forums for debating ideas about social transformation.
Tony Dines from Worthing Solidarity Network and Transition Town Worthing suggested that assemblies could draw in all people who are victims of the crisis of capitalism, including workers and small businessmen. They could be parallel organisations to local government up to a national level which aimed to replace the existing state institutions. The aim should be common ownership, not state ownership, he stressed.

The meeting was encouraged by a message from the Glasgow People’s Assembly which has already held three meetings at the Free Hetherington building which has been occupied by students since the beginning of 2011. A People’s Assembly/Convention is scheduled to be held in Lambeth, south London on May 21.

PAN participants will reconvene on Saturday May 7 at the Passing Clouds music and arts centre in east London. Meanwhile the website working group will contribute articles, blogs, news, photos and comments to the website and a new group was formed to develop connections internationally.

With the Coalition government in increasing disarray and the Parliamentary system offering no way forward, PAN’s boost for the campaign of building people’s assemblies is timely.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary