Any movement to disaffiliate trade unions from the wretched Labour Party can only ever succeed if it is founded in the ground roots of the union membership, is well-organised and determined to succeed.
Too often in the past, attempts to disaffiliate have foundered because they were organised at the senior levels of the union and were badly organised at that. Turning up at the AGM with a motion and hope isn’t enough.
Trade union bureaucracies will always act in the interests of the Labour Party. Some are even tacitly endorsed by the Labour Party. They may publicly criticise Labour from time to time, but they will never countenance disaffiliation.
In my former union, a motion passed at Annual Conference in 2022 calling on the union to undertake a consultation exercise on its future relationship with the Labour Party was ignored because it was not convenient to the Labour loyalists at the highest level of the union.
The collective will within my former union’s membership to hold the leadership to account for their failure to apply a policy set by Annual Conference was not there, principally because they were (and still are) as servile to the Labour Party as the leadership were.
Those members who rightly desire their union’s disaffiliation from Labour must organise now - create a membership-based network of activists who are prepared to agitate their fellow members in their workplaces and in branches.
The process will be long and arduous. There will be setbacks.
But no attempt to disaffiliate will succeed unless a mass movement is created that can not only overwhelm the union machinery and its loyal servants of the Labour Party, but can can sweep away the union leadership entirely, not only when they inevitably attempt to subvert and destroy any disaffiliation movement, but when they are eventually defeated on the floor of the union’s supreme authority and will inevitably attempt to subvert and destroy the will of that authority.
