Build workplace branches

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FIRST OF all I'd like to congratulate Socialist Organiser on being (unfortunately) the only group to organise a meeting on workplace branches during this conference.

It really is shameful that they are the only people to have given workplace branches that priority. In many ways the future of the Party will depend as much on how we develop workplace branches as anything else.

I'm speaking not really from any experience as a Member of Parliament, because I haven't man tre on lay official in the GMBATU - a been an MP for very long, but mainly from my experience as a union which has considerable room for improvement in terms of its own democracy.

I'm very wary of the argument that the reason for workplace branches is because that's the only way that we will be able to win ballots in the unions if Tebbit imposes them over the politi cal levy. If that is the only purpose of workplace branches, then I'm not sure that we'll enthuse thousands of trade union members about them.

On the other hand, if the Tebbit legislation does go through, then there may be unions where we can't carry a ballot for the political levy. It will have very serious financial implications for the Party, and the whole financial future of the Party will depend on our ability to collect subscriptions to the Party in the workplace.

That's important, but not terribly inspiring. What's much more important is that workplace branches can contain the solution to a dilemma that a lot of people have been talking about in Brighton this week.

When things go badly for the Left, then some people on the Left say, "The block vote is to blame"

Now I think it is dangerous to attack the block vote. It is dangerous to attack the close relationBOB CLAY MP speaking at the Socialist Organiser fringe meeting at Labour Party conference. ship that the unions have with the Party. But we do have to get to a situation where the criticism made of the way that trade unions determine their affairs within the Party is resolved.

Obviously it's not the job of the Party to tell the unions how to do that. But look at the contradictions. People like Basnett go around reading lectures about one person one vote; but apart from the EETPU I can't think of a union where the members have less say in how the union's affairs are determined than the GMBATU.

I remember in the deputy leadership campaign in 1981 we had a consultation based on the chair and the secretary of each branch in the region being invited along to give their views. I can remember one branch where there were four shop stewards who were all active attenders at their Labour Party General Management Committee. They couldn't go to the meeting. The branch chair, who was a card-carrying Tory, went to the meeting do support Healey.

Workplace branches are eventually going to be the way that we can defeat that sort of thing. They are one way of combatting the kind of passive, media-influencea, postal voting that the right wing of the Party are so enthusiastic about.

1 think we can look forward to the time when the way that unions vote at Labour Party conference wil be discussed and decided by meetings in the workplace.

The other thing is that the campaign for our own labour movement daily newspaper isn't going too well. And we become more and more aware, year by year, of the devastating effect the media have on us.

If we have workplace branches we will be in a position to put on videos and distribute literature in the lunch breaks.

Now if all that all happened it would not automatically mean that we would be electing Dennis Skinner as leader of the Party by a huge majority. But it would enable us to open up an informed discussion at a rank and file level.

I think that if there had been proper consultation in the GMBATU in 1981, it would have gone for Healey. But if we had been able to have a proper debate, I think by this time the vote in the union might be somewhat different.

As people experience having some say in the way the Party is run, they will discover why those matters which at the moment they see as remote and abstract are so important - matters like accountability and democracy both within the Party and in society more generally. LOREY LOBBY IN.S.MM.

LOBBYS N.S.MM.

LOBBY JOHN HARRIS