OK, I admit to cheating slightly here. Although I did used to know Peter reasonably well - I even once joined him and his now ex-wife Pat for rather delicious home-cooked Sunday lunch at their house in Putney - I know full well that these days he wouldn't bother returning an old comrade's calls.
So this isn't really a guest post, obviously. Nevertheless, allow me to quote a few extracts from a 1986 book called 'Political Strikes: the State and Trade Unionism in Britain'.
The author - a certain P. Hain, research officer for the Union of Communication Workers - is now secretary of work and pensions - erm, at least for the time being. So it can only be a matter of time before he acts on the proposals, surely?
The trade union movement has experienced great changes since the early 1960s, and the new right's political attack has undoubtedly reduced its power to advance, as well as its ability to strike.
However, the alternative is not to abandon strikes on the spurious pretext that their time has passed. They remain the ultimate right of a worker and an integral part of the trade unionist's armoury.
Indeed, there is a need to organise strikes more effectively and with greater care for a sense of tactics and strategy suited to the available circumstances ...
Workers must look to the future, building upon existing collective bargaining procedures, to tackle a much wider range of company decisions guarded under the umbrella of 'the right to manage'.
Full disclosure of information, investment priorities, production plans, research, marketing, profit distribution, future planning - all these are potentially more important than waiting to see what is left to pick up during annual wage negotiations. Joint control over staff pension funds - which contain deferred wages - is another key objective.
Industrial health and safety policies and the nature of the workplace environment should also be given greater emphasis.
So should the demands raised by the women's movement for childcare facilities, flexible working patterns, provision for regular screening and other aspects of personal health and medical care ...
Striking for demands like these could well win greater support than striking over wages.
Hain goes on to stress 'the key necessity for linking extra-parliamentary action by trade unionists to parliamentary action which is responsive to such struggles'.
He rounds off the book by arguing that 'Britain's unions can try to overcome their historical limitations by constructively politicising their activities ... and, most important, campaigning for industrial democracy as a step forward towards real workers' control'
By the way, I should point out - if only for the benefit of younger readers - that back in the day, this sort of prespective was unexceptional, even within the Labour Party. Many on the far left would have attacked it as wussy soft left drivel that fostered illusions in the working class and failed to comprehend the lessons of Chile. Those were different times.
Oh Peter, Peter. We were never exactly on the same political wavelength, even when we were both involved with Tribune in the early 1990s. But at that time I did at least accord you a certain degree of genuine respect as a radical reforming politician. I don't think I like what time and high office have done to you.
Posted at 14:28, 11 January 2008
Comments (7)
Why stop at Hain?
The Socialist Standard had a piece on the young Mr Brown in this month's issue:
The thoughts of Premier Brown (thirty years ago)
Yes, it was always Chile. I have even written a 'Chilean warning' on my site - attacking the likes of you (no, not Hain), if I recall correctly.
I've had the misfortune to work with many a future Labour MP and could tell many a story but usually of just a personal nature. Seeing Paul Boateng on TV today I recall having to watch the now honourable High Commissioner's pretty rad police baiting as Chair of the GLC Police Committee.
Your world and surroundings may have changed. Indeed I remember back then blacks and squatters lived in Stoke Newington (although I did get a book of poetry for my 21st bday in 1984 ridiculing the poor meat-deprived veggie children of Stokey - it had a reputation, even then). But has it fundamentally for a Left in say Middlesbrough or indeed for the prospects for socialism beyond these shores? I don't think so.
The only way I would go to dinner with a Labour politician like that - in 1986 or 2006 - would be for their last meal - consuming their spam consumed under the shadow of the gallows
Sad,innit? And that was in the days when Kinnock had taken the Party to the right.... Have come across Hain few times in recent years and always had hunch that somewhere in his psyche he regrets abandoning those values you quote. I have another hunch. He will now be sacked from the Govt at some point and, hey presto, seek credibility as a born-again leftie. Unfortunately, like Clare Short before him, he won't have any.
Yes, I recall my Labour MEP, Richard Balfe when I was a Labour member.
I was told by Labour members in 1984 that his then hard leftism was his second time there after having done the circle (at least) twice before. I recall him criticising me, from he claimed, the Left (he was very close to the Co-op party and the Stalinists there) as he defended the Alternative Economic Strategy and the GLC type economic development politics at the time - as woolly then as the Greens now.
You can guess the ending - he defected to become a Tory MEP
"Joint control over staff pension funds - which contain deferred wages - is another key objective."
Now that is interesting (from a future minister of work and pensions) and... achievable.
Hain came out with some fairly radical ideas not so long ago. He sent me a pamphlet copy of what became his book, I think called by the original title of What's Left. Hain retained the respect of some on the soft-left up till the election of LP Deputy. I was talking in the pub to a leading Borough and County Councillor about this only last Wednesday, and he had voted for Hain in the election.
Now he has blotched his copy-book by a far worse combination than simply being a former democratic socialist turned supporter of Brown/Blair's free-marketeering.
It is that he has the gall to explain away his gaff of trousering a mere £100,000 by means which would get him imprisoned were he to do the same as a Claimant under the system of his own Department of Work and Pensions.
Meanwhile pause and observe: the draconian measures applied to the workless and those on various types of incapacity benefits, the compulsory work for nothing and bogus training schemes, the vast subsidies to private companies and faith groups to herd the unemployed and the vast subventions to employers and charities to shepherd them.
The Tories' schemes to make us sweat for welfare, under the eye of Gradgrind PLC and Lord and Lady Bountiful, are already underway.
Meanwhile Hain is found out as Mister Well-lined Pockets himself.
As opposed to ther perk of privat medican.