At a guess there were about 800 people at the event. Roughly half were SWP members. Maybe another 20% were from other left organisations. When I left at half four there had been nothing that vaguely resembled a debate on how you organise in the unions or why or how you can organise a political alternative to new Labour. Instead we got an interminable series of platform speakers and when they had spoken for as long as they wanted a few people from the floor were given three whole minutes, though this could be extended if you were particularly rambling and off the point. The cynical part of my brain found itself thinking that they were not chosen at random because so many of them seemed to be expressing ideas very close to those of the SWP. The exception was Ted Knight. He was about the only speaker in the entire event who tried to give something that resembled a political analysis of the level of class struggle, why union leaderships behave like they do and how we can start recruiting to unions by taking up workers’ demands.
First speaker up from the floor in the morning session was a Muslim woman from Birmingham who remarked that she is not oppressed. She is liberated because her brothers and her parents allow her to carry out her union duties and attend meetings. Am I alone in finding this an original concept of liberation? Most of the other floor speakers kept us enthralled with anecdotes about what is happening where they work and how everything is dead brilliant even when they are being victimised out of a job.
Valerie Wise was the second most high profile ex Labour Party member at the event. She spoke about how dreadful New Labour is for the benefit of those in the audience who were undecided. Then she asked rhetorically whether or not she should join Respect. “Yes!” shouted many in the audience as though they were watching a pantomime. “Ah ha!” I thought. We are in for a surprise announcement. But she didn’t, saying only that she would have to think hard about what to do next. So along with the overwhelming majority of ex-Labour members she does not feel that a political home yet exists for her.
Interesting fact of the day came from the lawyer John Hendy. He pointed out that when Thatcher came to power 78% of workers were covered by collective agreements. Today it is 33%. In the morning such discussion as there was looked at whether or not the anti-union laws could be got rid of by parliamentary or industrial action, with Hendy favouring the former. Not one speaker that I heard tried to give an analysis of what the industrial situation in Britain is like, has been like or what the balance of forces are. It was set-piece after set-piece.
It was a dismal day. The majority of the audience was not in the first flush of youth. There were no significant new forces, bureaucrats or Labour Party members engaged with the project. While there was lots of rhetoric about how we need to organise at a grassroots level there was no opportunity to do much other than sit on your arse listening to the great and the good with the occasional on message speaker reassuring us that things are pretty good in their patch. If you wanted a template of how not to organise fighting unions this was it.
Liam redux 
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