The Tories have been slow to make capital out of Labour's militant union allies, argues Charles Moore.
By Charles Moore
Published: 7:27PM GMT 19 Mar 2010
"If she comes to power, it will be wholly because of the trade unions… Moss Evans and his T & G have acted as her stormtroopers." So wrote Bernard Donoughue, head of Jim Callaghan's Downing Street Policy Unit, in his diary. It was early 1979, and Callaghan's Labour government was in the middle of the economic crisis that would ensure its defeat by Margaret Thatcher. That May, come to power she did.
Here we are in early 2010, in the middle of an economic crisis. For the first time since that "Winter of Discontent", there is a real possibility that a Conservative Opposition will kick out a Labour government. An election is expected in May.
And here we are, once again, with what Donoughue, a lifelong Labour man, called the stormtroopers. The "T & G" which he denounced was the Transport and General Workers Union, the largest union in the country, led by Moss Evans. Today, the T & G has amalgamated with Amicus and changed its name to Unite (though its fractious internal arrangements suggest that it would better be known as Divide). Unite is led by Tony Woodley. From today, he is pitting his union against hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers in a strike designed to break the will of British Airways, which could go bust. And yesterday Unite's traditional allies in the rail union RMT promised an Easter strike of signal workers.
Mr Woodley is backed by the faction in his union called United Left, which declares that it wants "a socialist economic, social and political system", and wishes to "regain" the Labour Party. It has a motion down for the union's policy conference after the election that calls for the union to "give no support" to any Labour MPs who do not seek to abolish the "anti-trade union laws". This threat could be powerful: Labour campaigns in 148 constituencies are funded by Unite, and 167 Labour MPs and candidates are members of the union. Unite produces a quarter of Labour's money.
Mr Woodley's future co-general secretary is Len McCluskey, who is also supported by United Left. In Liverpool in the 1980s, he admits ("I would never, ever deny that"), he backed the Militant Tendency, the most famous extreme "entryist" organisation in Labour history. "I led lots of strikes," he boasts. You can read discussions of his Left-wing heroism on the website Though Cowards Flinch (a phrase from "The Red Flag").
Unite's political director is Charlie Whelan. Once he was Gordon Brown's spin doctor, and now he is back. Thinly disguised in flat cap and spectacles, he passes in and out of No 10 Downing Street. He is organising Unite to run the campaign in the marginal seats. He is Mr Brown's main adviser on how to fight the election.
The relation between the unions and the Government is even closer than in 1979. Then, poor old Jim Callaghan was trying, unsuccessfully, to hold the unions back. Today, Mr Brown is leaning heavily on the unions for his survival. And if he falls, Unite will anoint his closest associate, Ed Balls, as his heir.
Politically, this looks like an open goal for the Conservatives. But it is only this week that the Tories have started to kick the ball in the right direction. In the Commons, David Cameron asked the Prime Minister whether BA workers should cross picket-lines, a question Mr Brown dare not answer.
Why has it taken so long? Why are the Tories so slow to bang home the political points? It sometimes feels as if the Tory defeat of 1997 was the equivalent of the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash which wiped out our best security experts in Northern Ireland. An entire generation of knowledge perished. Since 2005, it is true, the party has got much better at presenting itself and developing policies in tune with people's desires. But it still resembles a boxer who prances around giving good pre-fight interviews, but then doesn't want to box in the ring. The Tories are not political, in the limited but vital sense of that word – knowing how to attack, how to behave when attacked, and how to keep on attacking.
And that is the one skill that Labour has preserved. The country is bust; the public services are broken; we're all getting poorer. Yet, still, somehow, Labour can hit harder than its opponents.
Witness the Lord Ashcroft row. There has always been a case for keeping Lord Ashcroft at arm's length. He is a classic example of the rugged individualist. The party could have decided that a man who had so much power over a foreign country [Belize], and who wished to remain a "non-dom" taxpayer while living here, was a bit too rugged.
There has always been a case – a stronger one, in my view – for making full use of Lord Ashcroft. He is most unusual among multi-millionaires in being acute about politics and dedicated in his political work. His booklet, Smell the Coffee, is the best single analysis of why the Tories lost three elections in a row. His organisational focus on marginal seats is a key piece of work. And none of the lurid accusations thrown at him has been proved.
But the Tories have never quite sorted out what they think about him. Lord Ashcroft's non-dom status could have been defended – despite what is now claimed, it was accepted at the time by the authorities in charge of scrutinising peerages, and, besides, all parties have non-dom peers. Or the Tories could have told him that it looked bad and he must change it. Instead, they took his help and money, but adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to his tax position.
No one sets out better than Lord Ashcroft himself how this Government plays rough. In his amazing book about it all, Dirty Politics, Dirty Times, Ashcroft explains how Labour suborned government officials to leak material against him, including the traditionally sacrosanct discussions between the parties about honours. Unlike too many current Tories, Ashcroft is phenomenally tough, as well as rich. He sued the Government for its leaks and extracted an apology and legal costs in 2003. So the Tories have known that Labour had government documents it was capable, if desperate, of abusing again. The election approaches, and it is desperate, so it leaks once more, to a pliant BBC. But the Tories were not ready. Don't they know there's a war on?
I am not arguing that the Conservatives should follow Labour down the path of lies. But I am very suspicious of the frame of mind that shirks the election battle, saying: "Oh no, we are better people than they are." It is a loser's argument, just at the point when they could, at last, win.
Re: The United Kingdom Elections 2010
Originally Posted by Furunculus
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