A report on the recent Wales Trade Union Conference in Cardiff.

Gan Nora Rhiannon

On Saturday 18th of October, trade unionists from across South Wales met in Cardiff to discuss the “crisis of political representation”. This is a timely conversation, given our situation. Since the General Election in June 2024 the Labour Party has begun a series of shameful attacks on the working class: their winter fuel payment cuts, their abandonment of Port Talbot steelworkers, their cruel disability benefit cuts, their persecution of the trans community, their weakening & delaying of workers rights legislation, the confrontational stance they’ve taken against striking workers (particularly the striking binworkers in Birmingham), and so on. Trade unionists, some of whom were already considering disaffiliation¹ as far back as the Blair years, are more certain than ever that Labour no longer represents the working class in any way. Those socialists still arguing that the best way forward is to push Labour leftwards from within can be likened to the Japanese soldiers who held out for decades after WW2 in the mistaken belief that the war was still ongoing.

The question is no longer if disaffiliation is the answer, but merely if it is possible. Given the pitifully servile state of many trade unions, this is going to be an uphill battle. Of the notable unions (those with over 10,000 members in 2020) Unite, UNISON, GMB, USDAW, the CWU, Community, the FBU, ASLEF and the TSSA are official Labour affiliates while the RCN, PCS, Prospect, the UCU, the RMT, Equity, the NUJ, the BFAWU and the various education unions are not. Notably the FBU disaffiliated in 2004 and re-affiliated in 2015, the RMT was expelled in 2004 (supporting the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) from 2010 to 2022) and the BFAWU disaffiliated in 2021. Unite is the subject of the most speculation and is arguably most likely to quit Labour (having recently expelled Labour MP Angela Rayner), though it narrowly rejected such a move in 2023. Though the FBU voted to remain in Labour in 2022, the CWU suspended funding (barring its affiliation fee) in 2021, and both ASLEF and the CWU are reportedly experiencing pressure to disaffiliate.

It’s always good to hear from comrades campaigning for the disaffiliation of the trade unions from Labour, this is important work and has my wholehearted support. It’s good news, also, that demands are being drawn up to ensure that the trade unions have a metric with which to judge who their true allies are. As the first step in shaping those demands, a “charter of demands for political representation”, drafted by members of local Trades Councils, was shown to attendees of Saturday’s conference. While several speakers acknowledged that the document was a compromise that left nobody satisfied, it is an important step in restoring a sense of standards to the trade union movement. One particular disappointment is the lack of detail found in some areas of the charter. While there are strong, clear demands for “no-cuts” budgets, a £15 per hour minimum wage and for nationalisation of utilities, transport and steel, for housing we only have a “fully funded council house building program” and “genuinely affordable rents”. This reflects an understandable lack of expertise in housing policy, which perhaps casts some doubt on the claim made by some that the trade union movement also represents the needs of the wider community outside the workplace. If we are to judge whether a given party or politician is an ally of the working class we shall need more specific details than “affordable rents”, since no party will openly position itself as a supporter of unaffordable rents. While nobody expects Trades Councils to put forward a complete manifesto, specific demands are always preferable to sloganeering in this kind of charter.

The most vital and essential element of the charter is fully intact however: the repeal of all anti-trade union laws and of all laws that “prohibit the right to democratic assembly and protest”. This is the litmus test, the most obvious way we can determine whether a party is worth trade union endorsement (let alone affiliation!). Labour failed that test long ago, its consistent failure to unchain the trade unions is concrete proof that it does not represent their interests. Any politician who is a genuine friend to the trade unions should be working to legalise sympathy strikes, lower ballot turnout requirements and lift restrictions on what qualifies as a “trade dispute” (so that strikes can be held to resist privatisation, outsourcing and other anti-worker government policies). Only time will tell if any party has the courage to actually adopt those demands into its manifesto.

Attendees were encouraged to bring the document to their branches. It is somewhat unclear what is planned once motions based on the charter have been put forward, but hopefully we will see these efforts bear fruit. Meanwhile, with an apparently unanimous acknowledgement of the need for disaffiliation, the question of the hour has become “what do we do next?”.

What is not on the table, at least for the trade unionists who were present at Saturday’s conference, is a closer relationship with Plaid Cymru or the Green Party. This may seem puzzling to outside observers, given the strong stance on steel nationalisation taken by Plaid Cymru and the left wing agenda of the Greens under newly elected leader Zack Polanski, but there was a general consensus on Saturday that these parties are fair weather friends. “Its easy to be left wing in opposition” said one attendee, while others expressed disappointment in the record of councils led by Plaid Cymru and the Greens. One Socialist Party member spoke of Zack Polanski failing to back no-cuts budgets, suggesting that a true workers’ party would refuse to slash spending and force the hand of government commissioners. A Caerphilly trade unionist suggested that any formal affiliation to Plaid Cymru would tarnish the reputation of the trade union movement for little practical gain. While at many recent events people on the South Wales left have spoken very positively of a potential alliance between the many different “progressive” parties and their supporters, it’s apparent that this is not a view that predominates in local Trades Councils.

By contrast, many trade unionists see Your Party as the obvious candidate for affiliation. With few sitting councillors and no real formal party institutions there seems to be very little standing in the way of strong trade union influence. With around 700,000 people signed up to its mailing list and two popular politicians at its head, it seems far more likely to succeed than the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition or any other party formed by the trade union movement in the near future. Indeed, despite lip service to the idea that such a party is still possible if this new one disappoints, one got the impression that many present considered Labour and Your Party to be the only viable options for the trade union movement. The hope of the majority at this conference is that once free of the former they can swiftly affiliate to the latter. For supporters of such a move the benefits are obvious: an affiliate party would give the trade unions a political voice, a way to advance their interests in Parliament and a pool of voters to recruit from. This is broadly the same reason that the trade unions formed the Labour Party in the first place: they want a socialist party in Westminster to unpick anti-strike laws, make social reforms and preach socialism to the masses. Many trade unionists consider it vital that socialism is an option on the ballot paper.

A vocal minority in the room, however, expressed a great deal of scepticism about affiliation to Your Party. They proposed as an alternative that unions disaffiliating from Labour take the opportunity to focus on frontline organising, and commit their funds to new expansion efforts. This is broadly the path that Sharon Graham of Unite has threatened to take, and that younger “gig” unions like UVW (United Voices of the World) and IWGB (Independent Workers of Great Britain) are on. It is also the strategy of community union ACORN, which deals on an equal and case-by-case basis with councillors, MSs and MPs from any party willing to listen. ACORN is known for operating under the unofficial slogan “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies”.

As mentioned previously, there was a great deal of talk at this conference (quite rightly) of the role Plaid Cymru and the Greens can have as potential handmaidens of austerity and false friends of the working class. If we became attached to their campaigns, that could indeed have a corrosive effect on our own support as trade unionists. What went largely unexplored by many in the room was the potential for the same to happen with Your Party. After all, the clique of MPs and former Labour & trade union bureaucrats running the setup of this new party has its fair share of bigots, obstructionists and class enemies. If all members of the Independent Alliance were to join into a new party tomorrow, that party would be the most landlord-dense in Westminster. Many younger trade unionists, disillusioned by the painful 2017 and 2019 elections, see Your Party as a doomed attempt to recapture the lost “hype” of those years rather than as a pragmatic way forward for socialists. It’s certainly true that Your Party has attracted a lot of interest, but it has squandered a great deal of goodwill on pointless bickering and wasted its time in the spotlight by failing to take bold stances. The party leadership have shown breathtaking incompetence in how they’ve chosen to launch their membership system, and are clearly already embroiled in the kind of embarrassing factional struggles that made the Labour Party a nightmare. As for its supposed popularity, historians amongst us may dimly recall that Enough is Enough also began its life as an extremely popular email list. Names and contact details in a spreadsheet obviously mean nothing if effective organising fails to materialise. A party’s potential on-paper, in online polls and so on, is not its destined future but a vision of the best case scenario. We are not living in that best case scenario.

The consistent failure of TUSC candidates and of entryism into Labour gives us a glimpse into where this approach with Your Party will likely lead. If it is genuinely true, as has been contended, that affiliation gives you influence over policy and that trade union bloc voting is a progressive force, then why has the Labour Party been taken to the place it is today? More importantly, if affiliation has no adverse effect on union independence then why were UNISON members apparently ordered not to attend this conference on the grounds that disaffiliation would be discussed? Why have most of the Labour-affiliated unions been so thoroughly tamed? Our position is arguably weaker now than it was in 1900 when Labour was founded, so why do we have hope that trying the same thing a second time will work out differently?

Comrades asserting the importance of union independence, particularly those from ACORN the Union, were accused of Syndicalism² by other conference attendees, and of asking trade unions to retreat from the political arena. Given the nature of Syndicalism, these seem like contradictory positions. In reality, neither is an accurate reflection of what these comrades were suggesting. Suggesting that unions should not attempt to rush (or “speedrun” as one attendee put it afterwards) the creation of a worker’s party is not the same as denying the eventual necessity of such a party, and asking working class organisations to focus on directly challenging politicians is definitely not a call for political passivity.

Upon meeting a person who is single, one does not immediately assume they have no interest in romance. Why then is it assumed that a trade unionist who doesn’t throw themselves at the first party that comes along is a Syndicalist? With the UK headed towards a more multiparty system than ever before, this is surely our moment to “play the field” and “work on ourselves” before making a commitment. Demands that we settle down immediately are, of course, rooted in a genuine fear of Reform and anger at austerity, but they are predicated on a mistaken belief that the UK left is strong enough to stop this tide of reaction in its tracks.

Despite the (rather refreshing) optimism of some trade unionists, the working class remains a largely dormant force in British politics: trade union density is around 30% in Wales (which trade unionists I know have described to me as “pathetic” and “embarrassing”), strikes are still relatively rare, class consciousness is low and most trade union leaderships continue to follow a “business union” model over a model of class struggle. The workingmen’s clubs, workers friendly societies and other pieces of socialist institutions that existed when the Labour Party was formed are all but gone, and in their place we have extremely unreliable government-owned, private-owned or charity-owned spaces. In this context members of the Welsh Underground Network and Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru, along with other comrades on the Welsh left, have consistently argued that the infrastructure and other preconditions required for a mass workers party do not currently exist in the UK. Indeed it seems highly doubtful that the UK left possesses the will, resources or maturity required to even begin forming such a party. In its place we have had dozens of unworthy “pretenders to the throne”.

As trade unionists, community unionists and socialists we may well engage with all these parties as part of our activity, but we must maintain our independence and focus on building up our own organisations. Now is not the time for affiliating to any party.

My view is that Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and Your Party all represent fundamentally opportunist forces. None of these are potential workers’ parties because in the UK there does not currently exist a workers movement strong enough that it could form such a party, much less control it. As trade unionists, community unionists and socialists we may well engage with all these parties as part of our activity, but we must maintain our independence and focus on building up our own organisations. Now is not the time for affiliating to any party. Only when the working class is again an active and engaged political force can a real workers party exist. Until then, our strategy for dealing with politicians must be confrontation as required, friendship as required. By declaring loyalty only to our members and our class, we can maintain a level of strength and integrity that would be impossible otherwise. By pouring our resources into organising rather than lobbying, we will be in a stronger position to confront parliamentary opponents. Independence from Labour is a golden opportunity for trade unionism to find new strength, freedom and flexibility, and we shouldn’t throw that away. For the time being we must adopt the ACORN motto as our own: “No permanent friends, no permanent enemies!”

1. The act of ending formal relationships with the Labour Party, withdrawing official support and ceasing payment of affiliation fees ↩︎
2. An  An early 20th century ideology which proposed that society should be run by a federation of trade unions, and that the primary instrument of political struggle for the working class should be the trade union not the workers party
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