Brendan Barber: undercover firebrand
Posted on Friday 28 December, 2007
Filed Under Trade Unions
It was once my lot – as an impoverished freelance journalist doing a one-day shift for a trade union journal – to produce a 500-word story summarising the contents of a speech by Brendan Barber, at that time deputy general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. That’s him, pictured left.
Yet even with the following week’s food money riding on it, it was only a certain innate talent for hackery that enabled me to complete the task. The peroration stands out in my mind to this day as one of the most tedious I have ever heard at a labour movement conference.
Not only was it essentially devoid of any content whatsoever, but the delivery was can only be compared to a sloth on mogadon.
Obviously, all this could only mean that Barber was bound for great things in the trade union bureaucracy, and on the spot I made a memo to myself to watch his progress. He has since risen from deputy general secretary of the TUC to general secretary. Sheer dynamism.
So I’m naturally shocked to read the contents of Barber’s New Year message. OK, neither the substance nor the rhetoric is quite up there with Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. But it makes a number of indisputable points about the class divisions in British society today:
A union leader has called for greater equality in society, saying the “soar-away super-rich” are becoming cut off from the rest.
Low pay for public sector workers could also cause “simmering resentment”, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber warned in his New Year message.
He urged more help for workers “at the bottom”, faster progress on ending child poverty and fairer workplaces.
Mr Barber said tax loopholes should be closed so the rich pay a “fair share”.
No, not the transitional programme, is it? Simply milquetoast social democracy of the type that would have been commonplace before Thatcherism and New Labourism, the sort of things the head of the TUC is supposed to say.
And of course the supine union leadership typified by Mr Barber will do nothing to act on the declaration, except perhaps by whinging privately to the few remaining Labour ministers suspected of atavistic sympathy for organised workers.
But it is some time since a mainstream figure in political life has said these undeniably true things. That would be encouraging for the class struggle left, if only it were capable of building rank and file pressure from below.
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Comments
8 Responses to “Brendan Barber: undercover firebrand”
Steady on Dave.
It’s a bunch of platitudes from one of the characters who give Blair and Brown an uncontested neo-liberal ride and is never likely to organise any sort of opposition to them.
It’s in his job description that he has to come out with this sort of thing from time to time. He might even believe it but he’s not going to do anything about it.
It’s obviously right that the TUC emphasises the very worst-paid, super-exploited workers. However, I’m concerned that this emphasis is so exclusive that it suggests that workers who are not on the very edge of starvation should be grateful for our lot and not make a fuss – or if we do make a fuss, should not expect the TUC’s support.
Umm, actually there lots f Xian weirdbeards, mainstream types that is, who come out with far more critical comments than this barber geezer. Could it be age and your own move to the right cause yu to have renewed illusions in these sub-reformist burocrats?
I do like Barber’s mock megaphone in that photo, but we’ll be waiting forever to see him actually do anything for what he’s shouting about.
Not the most flattering picture of Mr Barber, or does he always look like the bloke from the, ‘Who Ate All The Pies?’ song?
Newfound respect for ‘Xians’, Mike?
No Dave I have always respected Xians – some of them at least but never the hierarchs. It’s their beliefs I find repugnant.
“it is some time since a mainstream figure in political life has said these undeniably true things.”
Is that true? It would seem that these are pretty much the same things Compass have been saying within the labour party.
You could come up with a similar array of quotes from Jon Cruddas, and he got 100000 votes for deputy leader of the labour party.