No Friends of Labour
Desperate to show a contrast to ‘old Labour’, Tony Blair took pride in upholding draconian anti-union laws and was happy confronting organised workers. But this belligerence created a new generation of trade unionists unafraid to challenge him and make things difficult for New Labour.
Firefighters at Ealing Fire Station in west London watch the Prime Minister on television as he says that they cannot win their ongoing strike over pay and no new money will be made available without changes in working practices. (Photo by Chris Young — PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Taj Ali
In 1983, Arthur Scargill addressed a Labour meeting at the Victoria Club, a miners’ haunt in the pit village of Murton. Joining him was local MP and fifth-generation-miner John Cummings, as well as a young parliamentarian recently elected to represent the nearby constituency of Sedgefield, Tony Blair.
Though 1983 would be a year of historic defeat for the political wing of the labour movement, its industrial side was still relatively buoyant. Steely from its upward surge in the seventies, the most militant, tactically sophisticated trade unions were readying for an eventual confrontation that, it was hoped, could halt Margaret Thatcher’s brutal attacks on British workers.
Now, the Victoria Club no longer remains, and nor do the pits that surrounded it and sustained its custom. From the trade union movement’s 1970s assertion came its 1980s stalling, with the government’s hallmark tactics of state suppression and starvation proving to be too much for organised labour. As unions lost their confidence, anti-union laws were developed and forced through Parliament, with generations of workers feeling that their avenues for political intervention had vanished.
By the time 1997 came around, many felt a sense of renewed hope — surely, after nearly two decades of Tory rule, a thumping majority for Labour would put historic wrongs to right. Surely, the time was now to seize a historic opportunity to reverse the fortunes of the trade union movement — to sweep away anti-union laws which defanged organising; to dismantle the Thatcherite pillars of privatisation, cuts, and deregulation; and to develop a much more dignified social status for working people.
But Blair had other ideas. In the early days of his premiership, the man who had once smiled with Scargill was boasting to The Times that under his watch, Britain would still be ‘the most restrictive on trade unions in the Western world’. A series of dramatic disputes involving his leadership and the world of working-class organisation — from a bitter firefighters’ dispute to the expulsion of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) from the Labour Party itself — showed that he meant it.
But this moment of disappointment provided the development for opposition. In this period, many archetypal representatives of ‘sweetheart deal’ trade unionism fell in unions considered long sewn-up by the right wing. A new generation of politically conscious shop stewards emerged, and with them the rise of the ‘awkward squad’, a bloc of left-wing trade union leaders uninterested in niceties or comfortable capitulation to 10 Downing Street’s preferences.
One of those involved as a senior trade unionist in this period was Andrew Murray, who documented this rocky road in his 2003 work A New Labour Nightmare. After Britain’s biggest strike wave in decades and in anticipation of this country electing a Labour government likely to be as tepid on workers’ rights as in Blair’s time, Tribune sat down with Murray to discuss industrial relations under New Labour and their implications for 2024.
Understandably, the 1990s were a difficult decade for any union member. The miners had been defeated, the dockers were finished, and the diminution of unions seemed legally enshrined by the Thatcher administration and democratically defeated in the opposition by Labour’s abandonment of Clause IV, its commitment to the public ownership of industry. But what was the mood like within the movement in 1997, after Blair was elected prime minister?
People were obviously pleased. Tony Blair had taken a pretty adversarial approach towards the trade unions after he was elected leader, but that notwithstanding, most people were just exultant to see the end of the Tories. It had been eighteen years and Thatcher had been bitterly hated in the labour movement. There had been demoralisation after the miners’ strike, and other defeats as well: Wapping, the dockers in 1989. I think the unions had stopped believing there was any sure industrial path to advance and started looking for other options.
One of those was the European Union. The trade unions changed their policy to support the EU and its supposed social dimension, as championed by Jacques Delors. The other was relying on a Labour government that might, if not make things better, at least stop them getting worse. So, yes, there was a welcome, although it stopped short of the euphoria that was felt in other parts of the electorate.
How active was the left of the labour movement during this period?
The Left was generally in retreat. The idea of ‘social partnership’ had become the hegemonic idea in the Trades Union Congress [TUC]. That was championed by John Monks [the TUC general secretary from 1993 to 2003] and supported even by Bill Morris and the Transport and General Workers’ Union [T&G]. The idea was roughly that there needed to be a new partnership between unions, employers, and the government. It wasn’t really until the emergence of the so-called awkward squad in the early part of this century that that climate started to shift.
Despite this adversarial approach you outlined, unions still maintained quite a degree of power within Labour’s internal structures. How would you characterise Blair’s attitude towards them? What was his preferred approach? Did he directly intervene in internal union affairs?
I think he and Peter Mandelson would have liked to completely break the link between the unions and Labour, and move to something more like what prevails in the United States, where most of the unions support the Democratic Party but have no institutional link to it. That wouldn’t have been easy to do, though, because unions still had a bloc vote at party conference when it came to rule changes. So they devoted themselves to bypassing the unions on most issues, with the unions mainly turning a blind eye to that. They all wanted to see a Labour govern- ment and didn’t want to be blamed for getting in the way of its election. That was a view held particularly strongly by Rodney Bickerstaffe at Unison, who had previously been seen as a champion of the Left, and who remained a champion of the Left in a way. But he was worried about unions being seen to re-run past episodes of history that hadn’t worked out politically.
To intervene directly in unions would have been seen as unacceptable. However, Blair did intervene at the T&G. There was a general secretary election in 1995 in which Jack Dromey, later a Labour frontbencher, stood against Bill Morris, and the New Labour support was pretty overt. Blair never said anything publicly, but his supporters briefed that he wanted to see Jack Dromey win, and Jack Dromey sort of ran on the slogan of ‘New Labour, New T&G’. So perhaps that was an attempt to capture the more awkward of the unions, although Bill Morris wasn’t particularly ‘awkward’.
I think John Monks described it best: he said Blair treated the unions like embarrassing relatives best kept in the attic. Blair definitely saw emphasising distance from the unions as a key part of the New Labour project.
So, as we entered into the 2000s, we saw the rise of the awkward squad — meaning the election of several general secretaries who were committed, veteran left-wingers. How did that come about? Was it a response to New Labour in particular, or were there broader factors involved?
I think there were broader factors. It began in smaller unions in the railways and higher education, and then moved to middle-size unions like the Public and Commercial Services Union [PCS] and the Com- munication Workers Union [CWU]. It was driven by a feeling common to workers in different sectors that social partnership hadn’t really delivered, and unions were still getting weaker. There were specific industrial factors in each case as well. The privatisation of the railways created new problems, but also new opportunities for trade unions there. There was a general feeling that unions needed to be more assertive. And then the politics came into it, too, particularly around the Iraq War, which came onto the agenda in 2002.
That was quite a moment, wasn’t it? Unions were very vocal on Iraq — Bob Crow and Mick Rix, general secretary of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF), even called on Blair to resign. What were the particular shocks of this period?
Well, the main shock in a union election was Derek Simpson becoming general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union [AEEU], which was then in the process of merging with Manufacturing, Science, and Finance [MSF] to form Amicus. That was a shock because the AEEU had been the most right-wing union, with general secretary Ken Jackson described as ‘Tony Blair’s favourite trade unionist’. He wrote articles in The Sun attacking the Left and championing the most brazen class collaboration. Derek Simpson’s election opened the way to the eventual merger of Amicus with the T&G to form Unite the Union; and Tony Woodley winning the election in the T&G meant the ‘awkward squad’ spirit was spreading to the largest unions.
The firefighters’ dispute of 2002 and 2003 is a very interesting case study in terms of the rela- tionship between New Labour and the unions. Can you talk about how New Labour handled that dispute and what its attitude towards it was?
They were completely opposed to it. From memory, the Fire Brigades Union [FBU] had been asking for £30,000 a year: a substantial increase at the time. The government dug in and refused. They made very few moves that I can remember to settle the dispute. They just kept saying no. I don’t know whether the FBU regards it as a defeat, but they certainly didn’t get £30,000 at the time. It led to the FBU disaffiliating from the Labour Party because Labour just treated the union with disdain and indifference.
And just how significant was the expulsion of the RMT from the Labour Party?
The expulsion happened because the RMT supported candidates from the Scottish Socialist Party [SSP], which put them in breach of Labour rules. It was symbolically significant: the RMT is an important union, a very militant union, but not a particularly big union, so the expulsion probably didn’t make much difference to Labour’s overall trade union affi- liation base. Labour said [it was] forced into a corner, but [it] could have found a way around it if [it] wanted to. I think [it was] just happy to see the back of another left-wing union.
Although there might have been an increasing militancy represented by the awkward squad, union membership through these years continued to decline. Industrial action was nowhere near the level it was in the 1970s.
You have to bear in mind that under New Labour, over 1.5 million manufac- turing jobs were lost — those would have mainly been union-organised jobs. There’s a critique to be made about the failure to organise in new areas and new industries, but it’s very hard to keep overall membership up when you’re having factory closures at that rate. Heavily union-organised industries were declining as fast as they did under the Tories.
There was quite a bit of industrial action, but it wasn’t anything like it has been in the last two years. The main driver of industrial action overall, generally, is high inflation. That represents a significant cut in real wages, and that was what largely drove the strikes of the 1970s. So, the fact that there wasn’t industrial action on that level is perhaps not surprising.
But there are other battles that were won. I remember the battle to keep the huge Longbridge car plant on the edge of Birmingham open, which Tony Woodley led in 2002 and 2003. He kept it open for another five years. Reversing any factory closure was extraordinary because generally they just went through regardless. So yes, there was an uptick, I would say, in the liveliness of trade unions compared to the 1990s — but it was still partial and still had weaknesses.
Recently we’ve seen the largest wave of strikes in decades. The trade union movement appears to have become more assertive, and the interventions of union leaders largely relate to demand-ing a bolder approach from Labour. Thousands went on strike for the first time, and many of those people are now becoming active in their unions — something which seems to feel different to the pre-1997 atmosphere. How different do you think the relationship between the trade union move- ment and a future Labour government could be from what it was under Blair?
The trade unions are in a stronger position because of the recent strike wave. But the unions are not particularly politically assertive. The RMT is not affiliated to Labour and hasn’t any alternative project, so its political influence or impact is going to be limited, for sure. As for the other unions, none of them are really challenging Starmer very much politically. You have to work in a very consistent way to try and push back against a right- wing Labour policy, and I don’t think that is happening.
What’s different is that Tony Blair, for reasons of political positioning, thought it was essential to be seen to be hostile to the trade unions and certainly hostile to militancy. There’s almost nothing good to say about the Starmer leadership, but actually it isn’t playing that same game. I don’t think it sees the need to. Blair was in an age when the repu- tation of trade unions was that they were overmighty and trying to run the country. All that was rubbish, but he felt the need to dissociate himself from it.
Now, people don’t have the same negative views of unions. The recent strikes have faced nowhere near the same levels of hostility, even when they have inconvenienced the public. Possibly, relations could be on a better footing at the outset. We started this conversation by talking about the tremendous sense of relief people felt when Blair took over. I don’t think there’ll be the same feeling now because I don’t think there’s the same enthusiasm for Starmer altogether.
Looking at the rhetoric from the teachers, nurses, firefighters, and civil servants, they’re all calling for serious increases in investment. Some of these disputes aren’t over, and there’s every chance that we could see some spilling into a new government’s term. How do you envision industrial relations under a Starmer government?
Of course, there will be strikes. If inflation is reduced, that will probably diminish the level of strike action. But there’s pressing need for investment in the public services, which I don’t think the Labour government is guaranteeing at the moment. There could be difficulties ahead. Unions will certainly be happy to see Labour in office rather than the Con- servatives, but I don’t think there’s any great enthusiasm for Starmer or his programme. It’s certainly easier to list the things that Labour is not going to do rather than what it will.
Will there be a hope for social partnership? Possibly. Social partnership was what unions wanted in the 1990s. They never got it because New Labour was not interested in it any more than the Tories were. Social partner- ship would have required the government getting back to a sort of tripartism, or at least encouraging unions and employers to work together, and it never really did. It just left it to each union and each employer to get along as best they could without any real intervention at all.
I doubt the Starmer government will be any different in that respect. It will rhetorically encourage unions and employers to get along together. It will try and hold a tough line on public sector pay, which will be, as I said, easier if inflation is low and it will probably, in minor ways, improve the legislative environment for unions.
Trade unions have to recognise that the Starmer government is going to essentially continue with the main lines of government policy in relation to economic management, public spending, and taxes. They must arti- culate an alternative programme behind which they can mobilise members, and hopefully get the support of what’s left of the Labour left inside and outside Parliament, too. They have to say: ‘This is what we want.’