Jon Walker: A union of thinking for the Labour Party?

Mar 19 2010 By Jon Walker

I discovered something shocking this week. The Labour Party apparently has links to shadowy organisations determined to run down Britain.

They are known as “trade unions”, and they’ve been funding Gordon Brown’s party for many years.

This information comes courtesy of the Conservatives, who reveal: “148 seats that Labour is contesting at the next election are directly funded by Unite. 167 Labour MPs and prospective Parliamentary candidates are members of the union.

“Half of all elected Cabinet Ministers, including Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, have their seats funded by Unite”.

Of course, anyone with the vaguest knowledge of contemporary British history already knows that unions created the Labour Party. The TUC in 1900 passed a resolution supporting the creation of “a distinct Labour group in Parliament”, and although there were plenty of splits and changes to come, that’s when it all began.

But it’s fair to say that Labour stopped boasting about its links to the unions under Tony Blair. He complained of “the scars on my back” following his battles to reform public services, an apparent reference to opposition from the unions, and his attack in a 1999 conference speech on “the forces of conservatism” was aimed as much at trade unions as the Tories.

The British Airways strike, backed by the Unite union, comes at the worse possible time for Labour – with an election looming in which Unite will help fund the party’s campaign.

Gordon Brown appeared lost when challenged by David Cameron in the Commons this week to back BA workers who crossed picket lines to keep services running. One suspects Tony Blair would have had little hesitation in agreeing with the Tory leader on this occasion.

For the record, Labour’s Birmingham MPs who are Unite members include Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Sion Simon (Birmingham Erdington), Stephen McCabe (Birmingham Hall Green), Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill), Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr) and Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak).

Mr McCabe claims the Tories are scoring an own goal by attacking Labour’s union links.

He said: “To try to portray trade unions as some type of sinister organisation is the legacy of Thatcher and Tebbit, and shows the Conservative Party hasn’t changed.

“I am a trade unionist and the same is true of most of the people I represent.”