Good Americans
Tis a Thursday night in the London borough of Hackney, and a large group of local trade unionists have gathered to hear American trade union activists Liz McElroy and Lindsay Patterson talk about the successful US trade union contribution to Barack Obama's election.
'You can do it, too,' Patterson tells us, clearly believing this. 'You guys are sitting on a volcano at the moment (unemployment, house repossessions, the recession). You'd be surprised at the power that you have through the labour movement.'
Indeed we would.
There's not a lot of point in pretending - the contrast between the Americans and locals tonight couldn't be sharper.
Few in the local union movement feel exhilarated about its structures and circumstances, or its chances of escaping either.
Trade union membership is at less than 30% - better in the public sector than in the private, but not exactly a number for proud broadcast. The Labour government - to which too many major unions remain, fatally, affiliated - has steadfastly refused to repeal a single clause of Thatcher's vicious anti trade union laws: solidarity strikes are still illegal, people who take strike action are still vulnerable to victimisation (read sacked) when they return to work, and strike action is still routinely delayed by a lengthy, complex and perversely bureaucratic balloting process that is used to great effect by Labour-affiliated unions to delay action and erode would-be strikers' confidence and commitment.
As things stand, it's impossible to imagine the democratic election of leftwing leaders like Mark Serwotka at the PCS, Christine Blower at the NUT, and the RMT's Bob Crowe coming to pass in Labour-affiliated unions like Unison. The Labour party itself has lost the union grassroots, probably forever. This is - as if you'll need reminding - the party that has mass-transited public services and public sector workers to a failed private sector, degrading services en route, killed half a million Iraqis and ignored repeated union conference votes to leave Iraq, tortured political prisoners, taken council housing out of council hands, gambled and lost endless public sector funds on PFIs, and blown the spare on bankers, blah blah blah.
Offputting, too, is the viciousness with which Labour-affiliated unions attack grassroots union members who advocate cutting the Labour party from the union payroll. So. Hearing two successful, articulate people detail the joys of rallying the troops round an Obama is painful. Even those of us who believe that Obama is just another corporate knickknack would still like to have one. Instead, we've got Gordon Brown. And David Miliband. And Harriet Harman. That lot ought to be standing trial for war crimes, not asking union members to stump up for their reelection.
Blah.
McElroy - AFL-CIO election coordinator from Philadelphia and from a family with a strong Labour tradition - describes 2008 in the US and Obama's election as 'a perfect storm - the right candidate and the right issues.' Of course it wasn't as easy as that, or as partisan: although Democrat, pockets of Philly are deeply conservative, and, as McElroy says, pro union voters aren't necessarily socialists. Pennsylvania has seen its share of Republican senators, and the likes of Arlen Specter is apparently still kicking around. And the US has just had eight years of George Bush: hardly a golden era for worker rights. Anyway - McElroy's point is that not every union member was politically inclined to vote for a black man.
'We had all these sort of red herrings...[people were saying] 'he's inexperienced, he's this, he's that. What they were saying was that they didn't know if they could vote for him because of the colour of his skin.' McElroy says the trick was to keep the attention off Obama and on the issues.
'We're saying - your jobs are going away, and your healthcare is going away, and you can't afford to send your kids to college, and Obama is the answer to that. We compared voting records for our members - we'd say McCain has been in the senate for 26 years and here is all the workers' legislation that he has voted against, and Obama has been in the senate for four years, and here's all the things he's voted for. We were able to break that down and get our members out.' Union activists and community groups swapped membership lists, encouraged members to commit to leafleting and knocking on doors, and kept the messages straightforward.
Patterson is African American. He is a United Steel Workers of America rep who was released from his workplace by his union for six months to organise for Obama.
'For me, it was important to steer away from Barack Obama, because I knew that there was a lot of white people... I would go into a room with all these people and they would all be white except for me and I could say, well, vote for the black candidate, and everybody would say, well, that's because you're a brother. I had to say - vote for the candidate that represents you and your families. It's about job security. It's about the future. It's about your children's future. The workers who are way out on the right - let 'em go. We want someone who is wavering a little bit - those who have given up, those of you who say politics don't work for me. That's your key to reach out to those people.'
But - having reached, what can UK trade unionists give? That's the great insurmountable right now. Hackney TUC's laudable aim is to try and build an Obama-style grassroots campaign around this year's European elections, but even in your wildest union fantasies, it's almost impossible to see this taking off.
The TUC's message to union members will be to use their EP vote to keep the BNP out, rather than to help any particular candidate in. It's an important cry, but is it really a union-wide rallying one? Too many members are too disillusioned with Labour and Labour affiliated unions to save themselves from rightwing politics, let alone to save the European parliament.
The Labour activist message is straightforward, but risible: if you don't vote Labour, the Tories/BNP/rightwing whoever will get in! union members are told, for all the world as if Labour's tenure has made union membership worthwhile. You need an Obama to dangle to convince them to think that.
