The leader of the UK Labour party, Kier Starmer, during the Labour’s National Policy Forum has announced that the Labour will not repeal the new anti-Union laws that the Conservative government introduced last year. We have previously covered these anti-Union laws. This is only one week after he promise to repeal these anti-Union laws at Unite the Union’s union policy conference.
His reversal of this promise prompted the leadership of Unite the Union and GMB (two of the largest British Unions) to leave the Labour National Policy Forum. However, Unison (another one of the largest UK Unions) as well as GMB have since endorsed the policies that were decided in that conference after a couple amendments, with only Unite the Union refusing to back Starmer’s blatantly treacherous policies.
Unite the Union’s leadership has also previously criticised Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party stating that he “must do better”. However, they have also increased their funding of the Labour party to over £1 million pounds a year. In addition, Unite’s leadership has banned the viewing within Union buildings of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie” and Al Jazeera’s “The Labour Files”, two documentaries that reveal in great detail the anti-democratic and corrupt inner workings of the Labour party. Unite the Union’s leadership’s excuse to its membership for the ban is that “the issues covered in the film are pertinent to internal Labour Party matters and that is not the focus of our union”, which they say as they continue to give millions in what they receive from the membership in the form of union dues to the Labour party.
The British Labour movement is the oldest in the world, and its leaders especially have enjoyed a labour-aristocratic share of historic British imperialist plunder and with it a vested interest in preserving the status quo. The capitalists of Britain are the most experienced in the world in misleading and deluding workers, and as such varying levels of treachery at every level is the essence of the current British workers’ movement. The level of class consciousness of British workers in generally low, although it is rising as their rights and livelihoods are being openly attacked, but each stage of increased consciousness is met with a new layer of treachery and opportunism, if better veiled. This even extends to what little remains of the Communist movement as we have previously written about.
As there is no current party that represents the workers interest to the full extend the main task of communists is to form one. And although it will be difficult, the workers of Great Britain can and must overcome every attempt to mislead them with the guidance and leadership from a genuinely Communist party.