UK TRADE UNIONS: THEY'RE NOT EQUAL TO IT

I'm just reaching the denouement of a superb psychological thriller by the Labour Peer Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, called "The House of Stairs". One of the book's central characters, Bell, often uses the expression "I'm not equal to it", although she is quite up to the job of murder.

In addition to being excellent genre fiction, "The House of Stairs" is also a fine novel whose story reflects on the excesses of the 1960s and the perspective of the more sombre 1980s. This is the time frame in which I now want to reflect on the role of trade unions, although my starting point will be the so-called "New Austerity" of 2010.

I began with a literary reference because one of the most sensible comments on "Unequal Britain" came recently from another Labour supporting writer, and former local councillor, Jonathan Myerson. Now I do not usually have much time for Myerson, but when he described the "New Poor" as people who have of necessity more than one low-paid job at the same time, he hit the nail on the head.

Most of these people will not be members of UK trade unions, nor will the comrades meeting this week in Manchester take very much interest in their plight. This is not to deny, however, that the unions have improved the lot of women working in low-paid jobs in the public sector, comprising a key part of its workforce, during New Labour's period in office.

The election of a Labour government in 1997 followed those "wilderness years" of the 1980s when the Party was widely regarded to be unelectable largely because of perceived trade union excesses in the 1970s, culminating in a "Winter of Discontent".

In fact, such excesses went much further back in to the post-war period, and were satirised in that brilliant film "I'm Alright Jack". Even the left leaning comedian, son of Communist parents, and now esteemed writer himself, Alexei Sayle, could acknowledge this in a rather good BBC Radio 4 "Archive Hour" retrospective, which humorously described his own experience of trade union conferences during the 1960s.

Nevetheless, the follies of the British trade union movement are by no means the whole story, nor are strong unions inevitably the enemy of economic productivity, as shown in Germany, even if this narrative has dominated their modern history in this country.

My own response to this narrative has however come full circle. I was skeptical of the movement by the late 1970s, a supporter during the 1980s, sympathetic when New Labour came to power in 1997, and skeptical again by the mid-noughties.

For the election of a Labour Government, with an unprecedented three terms in office, turned out to be a profound missed opportunity for the trade unions, who in turn contributed to the underlying problem of New Labour's lack of a viable political economy for government. In essence, both sold out to unsustainable market-fixing policies which enabled equally unsustainable levels of public expenditure: a political double-whammy if ever there was one !

Thus all the rhetoric currently directed by trade union leaders, and people like Labour Party leadership contender Ed Balls, at the Coalition Government's proposals to manage the economy and public finances sound extremely rich coming from a partnership which, aside from the speculative investment industry, have done most in recent years to create the very problems about which they now most vociferously complain. Talk about trying to get away with murder !