After last year’s strike, where Gordon Brown told CWU members to “get back to work” the attitude towards Labour has gone from one of smouldering anger to outright rejection among rank and file CWU members. Thousands have filled in forms to individually disaffiliate by ensuring their political fund contributions do not go to Labour. Even Billy Hayes has admitted that polls showed only a minority of CWU members supported Labour.

This year the debate came to a head at conference with sixteen resolutions on the question of Labour, almost all calling for some form of retaliation for Labour’s betrayal. However manouvres by the NEC and the pro-Labour London bureaucracy blocked the opportunity to make a break with Labour. While the promise of a ballot in March 2009 will allow us to refuse to fund Labour in the general election, no doubt the danger point has been passed and we will be leaned on next year to vote Labour so we don’t let in the Tories.

New Workers Party at the top of the agenda

The first motion on the agenda, Motion 101 from the Coventry and Welsh Valleys branches led by Socialist Party members, proposed to “end funding the Labour Party and to campaign for a new Workers’ Party that would embrace socialist ideas”. At last year’s conference a similar resolution was “timed out” by debate, so the fact it came first this year shows the pro-Labour leadership felt it could no longer keep the question of a New Workers Party off the agenda. Instead they hoped that with so many alternatives put by different branches, which would all fall if 101 passed, their backers would all unite to knock out Motion 101.

Immediately after it the NEC placed its own resolution on keeping the Labour link but focussing funds on lobbying the party and only supporting those Labour MP’s with a proven track record of supporting union policy. They hoped that this “Labour-lite” policy could get enough support to block the break with Labour.

There were many motions with different degrees of support for Labour, for instance restricting support to left Labour MPs. One motion called for no change in our policy at all, another called for outright disaffiliation which it would have been right to reject, since it would have meant a step backward into apolitical trade unionism, when we need a political party to unite the working class in to struggle for its needs.

Towards the end a potentially popular Motion 115, largely from branches with prominent Socialist Workers Party members, proposed democratising the political fund to support any candidates that fought for CWU policy. The minimum (and inadequate) policies put forward as the basis of such support was “oppose entirely the privatisation of the post office, support the trade union freedom bill and oppose an attack on Iran.”

Manouvres undermine debate

However the whole scheduled debate on the political fund had the rug pulled out from under it before it even began, with a dirty manouvre from the NEC and the London Divisional Committee. No doubt panicking at the ever-more unpopular Brown, who received a thrashing in the May local and London elections over the 10p tax rate cut, the NEC put an emergency motion to ballot the membership on whether to fund Labour at the next general election. They hoped this would block moves to disaffiliate. It was a step backward from a resolution at last year’s conference, which committed the executive to ballot members in June 2008 whether to give any money (which presumably would include affiliation fees) to the Labour Party.

The London bureaucracy put forward a similar motion calling for the ballot in March 2009, if the government had not dropped privatisation and reversed its attacks on pensions and post offices by then. Martin Walsh, London Divisional Rep and a supporter of the SWP-controlled Post Worker bulletin, moved the motion. When this was passed Monday afternoon under the guise of motions on privatisation, the bureaucrats’ cause of rallying to Labour’s defence had taken a big step forward: they argued that to disaffiliate contradicted the emergency resolution just passed and our preparations for war.

The leadership helped smooth the way for their victory by placing John Cruddas as guest speaker before the debate on Labour, who gave a rabble-rousing speech slamming Gordon Brown for "going back" to a Blairite agenda (when did he ever leave it?) and claiming New Labour is like "a dog with no balls"! Yet that phrase best describes what remains of the “Labour Left”, which is too weak and powerless to effect any change in the government’s policy.

Hayes proves he is Labour’s point man in the CWU

The next day conference duly rejected Motion 101 for a new workers party by a huge majority, over 90 percent by some reports, endorsed the NEC motion 101 keeping our link to Labour, and massively rejected Motion 115 to democratise the political fund. Labour-loyal Hayes led the charge.

He slammed New workers party motion 101 as an “embarrassment” to the branches proposing, and a recipe for isolation. He used the usual spin about how the CWU has been able to influence Labour citing the recent laws on agency workers, when tougher EU legislation giving such workers rights from day one was gutted by the TUC on behalf of the CBI to only rights after 12 weeks!

Hayes used the same old chop logic the CWU leadership always uses: “We are supposed to start up a new party. This is, of course, another way of saying that there isn’t an alternative party that the CWU could support. As there isn’t an alternative – then I suggest we continue our current policy.” It is precisely because union bureaucrats like Hayes fight tooth and nail against such proposals that there is no alternative, instead they sling Labour millions of pounds of our money over the years that could be used to build an alternative.

Democratise the fund but vote for who?

However in arguing against democratising the fund (motion 115) Hayes scored some real points, highlighting the weakness of the SWP’s approach. In terms of the minimal policies put forward as the basis of CWU support, he rightly argued “Is that the limit of our policies, or our political ambitions? Anyone who promotes this tiny platform can receive CWU money? Knowing that, quite a lot of politicians would say they support it.” The SWP obviously wanted to open the CWU up to funding their populist Respect project, but equally this could see bourgeois or middle class parties like the Greens, Plaid Cymru or Galloway’s Respect Renewal getting our money - even individual Lib Dems! By dropping class in both Respect and its motion to democratise the fund, the SWP opened itself up to Hayes’ hypocritical attack.

Hayes stated that the motion was “dishonest” because it would mean in reality the CWU would be thrown out of the Labour Party for supporting other candidates under the party’s rules, like the RMT was when some branches funded the Scottish Socialist Party. This is of course not at all dishonest – why shouldn’t we put an effective fight for what postal workers need above Labour’s undemocratic monopoly of our support? If they throw us out for fighting for what we need, so be it. But Hayes’ intention was to raise the spectre of eight years of failure by the SWP and SP to launch an effective alternative to Labour. In doing so he no doubt stirred the fears of many honest reps and delegates present that a split from Labour was a futile, even dangerous project:

“It all ended badly for the RMT. The SSP split in 2006, and the RMT refused to support either side of the split. So the RMT gave up a hundred year relationship with the Party of Government, for a three year relationship with an opposition party which broke up.”

Ouch! The SWP’s cross-class Respect project with its uncritical cheerleading of George Galloway; the go slow signatory campaign of the SP aimed at rebuilding a reformist Old Labour style party; and the support of both for the SSP, corroded by Scottish nationalism and the uncritical cheerleading of Tommy Sheridan – Billy Hayes succeeded in winning by pointing to the eight years of wasted opportunity by the left and the wreckage of centrism’s failed initiatives.

Nine more months of Labour?

This year the bureaucracy managed to convince the majority of delegates with the need to stick with Labour for now to maximise our influence on Labour’s Hooper review. CWU activists should hold them to this promise, demanding a ballot to pursue a decisive strike, and rejecting the NEC’s “strategy” of half-baked compromises in favour of abolishing Postcomm, for full government support of our existing pension and level of service (with all the infrastructure this requires, the current network of mail centres and delivery offices) and the restoration of Royal Mail’s monopoly.

Of course the Hooper review was just the latest excuse of the bureaucracy for why we shouldn’t leave Labour. Next year when March comes round and its time for a ballot on Labour, they will insist that we fund it to ensure Labour’s victory to avoid letting in a Tory government. Labour is a complete dead-end, and we can’t tie the fate of our jobs, union and industry to Brown winning the election when he is certain to lose it. The ballot is not automatic but the leadership can still decide not to hold one,

The task of militants is the opposite, to build a mighty strike and in the inevitable obstruction and attacks we receive from Labour, convince workers to vote against funding the party in March 2009, while supporting all possible initiatives at every level to build a new workers party.