Woodley, Unite and Labour: more than a bit of verbal?
Posted on Tuesday 1 June, 2010
Filed Under Trade Unions
MANY trade union general secretaries can deliver a punchy left-ish sounding speech when the occasion demands, without any particular implications for their political practice.
Tony Woodley is a case in point. I am not suggesting he is in any way a poseur; he’s a genuine working class bloke, labour movement born and bred, who made his way up from the shop floor. I don’t doubt that he privately sees himself as a socialist by conviction.
But although he has sometimes been touted as a paid-up member of the Awkward Squad, I have never really bracketed him up there with the true rock stars of that particular breed, such as Crow, Serwotka or Dear
Maybe they should have established a separate lesser category for Woodley, Rix and Gilchrist, giving it a moniker like the Slightly Untoward Team or something.
Perhaps because he has never done time as a commie or a Trot, Woodley’s political instincts have typically seen him unwilling to criticise New Labour openly, even when they damn well deserve it. But now New Labour are out of office, it looks as if the gloves are off.
Hence the content of his address to the Unite policy conference in Manchester yesterday. Incidentally, the only place you can read a full account is on page three of the Financial Times this morning. There is no coverage whatsoever in the Guardian or the Daily Telegraph.
What’s up, guys? Britain’s largest and most politically influential trade union not newsworthy enough for you, or something? Even the normally dependable Morning Star only accords the speech five scant paragraphs.
Admittedly I haven’t seen the full text, but the impression the FT report gives is that Woodley had much to say about the relationship between unions and the Labour Party, and is even talking in terms of ‘taking the party back’ for working people, the poor and the unemployed.
He slammed the last government for involving Britain in the Iraq war, which he branded ‘illegal and unjust’, and demanded the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
Unite members should only back those Labour leadership candidates unequivocally committed to scrapping the Tory anti-union legislation of the 1980s, he implored. Yes, you read that right. That presumably rules out everybody who will actually make it onto the ballot paper.
I won’t be alone on the left in saying ‘amen’ to all of the above. It is, of course, sadly symptomatic that Woodley is only coming out with this now. Surely the best time to try to influence Labour policy is when Labour is in office and not afterwards, comrade?
Maybe he has delivered perorations with a similar content many times before, especially when safely on home turf. But if so, I will confess to not having heard about it.
What I am left wondering is just how far these words reflect the mood at the base of the labour movement. If Woodley is just giving it a bit of verbal, then that is pretty much that.
But if this is an early indicator that some trade unionist leaders are thinking in terms of using the political influence that the Labour-union link still gives them, at least potentially, then the significance of the speech could yet prove considerable.
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Stephen Twigg has just made an excellent speech on education in the Commons on the Queens Speech. I wonder what JOHNNO contributes to society.
“Woodley, faced with an almost impossible situation in many of the industries he covers, has done his best and delivered”
I am surprised anyone with connections to longbridge would be saying this about Woodley, considering his hapless leadership in that struggle.
Dean. Of course there is always someone else in retrospect that could do a better job! So how do you know about his leadership. I ask this as lefties that cannot get elected to do the job are always the critic. What would you have done in his place.
“I am surprised anyone with connections to longbridge would be saying this about Woodley, considering his hapless leadership in that struggle.”
Yeah?
Explain, please, Dean.
For instance: what would you have done?
Without wishing to go over the whole long history again I would say generally that Woodley, in typical fashion, was too quick to jump at the request of the bosses. An example would be the Rover Tomorrow deal. But as someone close to Longbridge you must know the history. Maybe hapless was a little OTT, obviously other, more fundamental factors were involved but I am just surprised you would be such a devotee of Woodley’s leadership.
Dean. Once again what would you have done.
Jim, Jimmy, Johnno
Being one of those, according to the WSG articles, a substantial layer of militant workers won to the Socialist Labour League in the 1960s as a result of its political struggle against the Labour and trade union bureaucracy. A lot younger than Thornett, I had tremendous respect for him. I left before he split from the WRP.
I can understand him turning his back on Trotskyism because I have done it myself even more so. I think Trotskyism has hurt the left as much, if not more so than Stalinism. I blame it on the common thread to both, which is Leninism and until that is recognised I suspect the British left will keep on going nowhere. I suspect the SLL/WRP was about as close as anyone has managed to building a Bolshevik party in Britain since WW2 and it didn’t work for numerous reasons. Democratic centralism being just one of those that parties like the SWP still suffer from.
Les: you are obviously a time-served militant, so by all means criticise Trotskyism and Leninism, but ‘Jimmy Glasgae’ is a teenage mutant freak who pretend to be cleverer than us, so his squeakings and sqwarkings are just that.
Thanks SueR ‘TEENAGE’. If only. Trotsky was a man of his time a great thinking man. He did what was right in helping overthrow the vile Russian regime. A civilian with no previous military training leading the Red Army to victory surely was a great moment in history and should not be forgotton. I do not think he or Marx or Lenin would have wanted a lot of present day numpty middle class schoolboy/girl looney lefties using their names. The only revolution we need in Britain is to try and stop the well fed bloated English Tory voting working class from killing themselves from obesity.