Labour’s tough journey ahead over rail strikes

Grant Shapps has tried to extract maximum political advantage from the dispute, writes Sean O’Grady

(PA)

Since the Labour Party’s birth from mass trade unionism, it has been funded by unions, grounded by the unions, has recruited some of its finest talents from unions and has been routinely embarrassed by trade unionists exercising their right to withdraw labour.

Occasionally, union intransigence has contributed to the fall of a Labour government, as in 1970 and 1979. In other times, Labour prime ministers have scarcely treated them differently from any other pressure group, such as when Tony Blair ludicrously declared New Labour to be “the political wing of the British people”, no less.

So it has been a problematic relationship. The looming rail dispute is no different, despite the RMT no longer being officially affiliated to the Labour Party.

These are the first highly disruptive national strikes for decades and are a direct result of the dislocations caused by the pandemic and the added pressure on the economy and public finances post-Brexit. Conservatives have always used such industrial action to prove that it is they who are on the side of “working people” and to make Labour frontbenchers look as if they support militant left-wing activists, despite the fact that strikes happen in free societies (indeed, are an indicator of a free society) and happen only after a clear majority is achieved in a secret postal ballot.

Grant Shapps has tried to extract maximum political advantage from the dispute.

“Scratch the surface of Starmer’s supposedly modernised Labour Party and you find unreconstructed Corbynism,” he said. “No wonder, because Labour is still drenched in rail union money. The three main rail unions, RMT, Aslef and TSSA, have donated £1m to Labour over the past five years, including donations to individual MPs. But the blind loyalty of some Labour politicians to the union cause cannot obscure the all-too-visible truths about this dispute.”

Labour frontbenchers have been surprisingly spooked by these vibes and the long-running dispute about pay and jobs, and are all over the place in their media positioning — supposedly a shaky neutrality.

Keir Starmer, teased by Boris Johnson about “Labour’s rail strikes”, says blandly that no one likes strikes (not strictly true, as you’d find if you ever met anyone from the Socialist Workers Party). He argues the government should be organising peace talks between the unions and the companies (a traditional, corporatist sort of view) and that the prime minister only wants to feed off divisions (difficult to argue with). On-message shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh concurs: “It is frankly extraordinary that it appears you [ministers] have yet to hold any talks on the biggest rail dispute in a generation.”

On the other hand, the apparently hard Blairite Wes Streeting was much more pro-worker, taking the argument to the companies and ministers, and boldly declaring that if he were an RMT member he would vote to strike.

When Streeting’s quotes were put to Rachel Reeves, the distinctively social democrat shadow chancellor, she dodged having to agree with Streeting by pointing out that she’s not a railway worker (as if anyone had ever tried to book a supersave return with her) and that the job she wants is chancellor of the exchequer.

The left-ish Lisa Nandy says she “stands with the rail workers”, while shadow work and pensions secretary Jon Ashworth calls them “Tory strikes”.

One thing we do know is that, for the first time since the miners were smashed in 1985, strikes and union power will be salient political issues. Soon the postal workers might be on strike, and more public sector workers are sure to follow as inflation climbs above 10 per cent. Paradoxically, industrial relations will be in the news at a time of full employment and labour shortages, which will help many workers win pay rises but also squeeze profits and investment and push prices higher.

There may well be more public sympathy these days for workers such as nurses desperate to maintain their living standards, or even just to feed their families, but a wave of 1970s-style disputes will also add to a mood of national malaise and a government no longer in control of events. It isn’t just the rail workers who have a lot at stake.