Unite and Labour in Falkirk: a legitimate stitch-up, or worse?



Just before 5pm on a Friday, with the focus of the parliamentary lobby on the G20 in St Petersburg or their third pint, Labour put out  its statement that Karie Murphy, Stephen Deans and the union Unite have been exonerated of wrongdoing over the Falkirk parliamentary selection fiasco.

Immediately the warring old Labour Left and ‘Blairite’ factions resumed hostilities on Twitter over what it meant, with the former (Owen Jones leading the pack), demanding that all comments by anyone against Unite be withdrawn and apologised for, completely, immediately, unequivocally.

I’m a Labour member (a branch secretary indeed) and am no member of either faction. However I am far from convinced by this ‘exoneration’.

As far as I see it, the Falkirk affair is either an example of legitimate (or ‘institutionalised’) fixing by Unite, within the rules, or there has been a cover-up – and there are sources in Falkirk Labour who claim the latter.

As the New Statesman’s George Eaton wrote soon after the news came out (while also quoting Labour’s statement in full):

“It is no coincidence that the matter has been resolved two days before the start of the TUC conference and a few weeks before Labour's gathering in Brighton. Earlier this week, Unite's Scottish branch warned that it would boycott the Labour conference unless Murphy and Deans were reinstated.”

So, circumstantially, this action is rather convenient for Ed Miliband, Labour’s governing body the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Unite too.

Indeed in its statement announcing the decision, Labour said: “At each step Labour’s general secretary and NEC have acted quickly to protect the interest of the party.” Read that carefully – the interest of the party. The statement then admitted that key evidence had been withdrawn and further evidence provided by individuals concerned.

This statement doesn’t exactly deter further interest in the case, and it didn’t take long for the investigative journalist Michael Crick to reveal on Twitter, “Falkirk Labour source claims witnesses to wrongdoing were persuaded to withdraw their evidence under pressure”. This is crucial evidence (from Unite members remember, who claimed they had been enrolled without their knowledge) which led to Labour initially referring the case to police.

From the outside it could be that the whole case was either a misunderstanding or the blowing up of a local issue into a national scandal.

But that leaves us with certain facts. One of the most important is that Unite did attempt to fix the selection of Karie Murphy by Falkirk Constituency Labour Party by a mass enrolment of around a hundred of its members just before the selection started – an action which boosted membership 50% overnight. This could have been legitimate under Labour’s rules: unions are now allowed to pay Labour membership fees of members joining the party, so are able to control that process totally.

So either way, the immediate response from the BBC 1’s Six O’Clock News that “Unite has been cleared of trying to rig" Falkirk was incorrect, though no doubt convenient for both Labour and Unite. Unite has in fact been cleared of breaking the rules.

Given the party’s highly-developed and -convoluted apparatus of legitimised fixing which is constantly fiddled with by the NEC to suit whichever faction is dominant, sticking to the rules isn’t any guarantee of probity or ethics within Labour.

As I have argued here and elsewhere before, we could really do with some ethical standards in Labour: institutionalising ethics rather than fixing for one’s faction. The Right and Left factions generally assume the absolute worst of each other, and often they are right (or at least have been in the past).

However Labour people better keep a watch out for Michael Crick and others, who are going to be digging in to this story further. To me, this ‘exoneration’ doesn’t smell right. Certainly if there has been a cover-up, the scandal could get a whole lot worse for Labour and for Unite.

After all, as was said after Watergate, “it's not the crime, it's the cover up.”

Comments

  1. John Smith7 September 2013 at 12:26

    Go for it but beware the revenge of the ultra left ..

    ReplyDelete
  2. treborc8 September 2013 at 19:59

    Ultra left is that like the Ultra right.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ben Cobley8 September 2013 at 22:35

    I should perhaps quote a response to this article on a LabourList thread from Unite's Political Director Jennie Formby (link below).

    She said:

    "Ben Cobley, your blog states 'This is crucial
    evidence (from Unite members remember, who claimed they had been enrolled without their knowledge).' WRONG. They were not Unite members and were not recruited under the union join scheme. You conclude that either Unite is guilty of fixing or else there has been a cover up, with no evidence to support this theory other than speculation by other equally ill-informed individuals. But hey, why let
    the truth - that Unite did nothing wrong - get in the way of a (not very) good story."

    I replied, saying:

    Jennie - the main point I make is that Unite did engage in fixing quite clearly and openly under the union join scheme. That is no theory.

    The rest of your comment is strange, since you attack what I say and other 'ill-informed individuals' as wrong while claiming superior knowledge, which you do not reveal. Why not reveal what you know and we don't? And also perhaps how you came to know it?

    She replied:

    "Encouraging our members to join of their own free will is not 'fixing' and we will continue to encourage this which is of course something that Ed Miliband is now urging all unions to do under his new proposals. And my knowledge is based on the fact that as Unite's Political Director I have read and studied the report and have detailed knowledge of all the surrounding facts."

    I then responded:

    "Why not reveal these facts then and let the world judge for itself, rather than making vague slurs at others on the basis that they are just 'wrong', from a position which couldn't be more invested in the matter?

    As for 'fixing', I guess it's a matter of semantics. Unite may have not broken any rules, but it stuffed members into Falkirk CLP en masse at the last minute when that CLP was running a parliamentary selection, which Unite was running one of its principal people in. I call that a fix, but for powerful people in and around the Labour movement, this is seen as normal behaviour.

    I think we all need to take a good, hard look at ourselves as an institution, and consider whether we really like what we see."

    That was the end of the conversation.

    There is more from others on the issue in the thread to LabourList editor Mark Ferguson's article here:

    http://labourlist.org/2013/09/five-questions-for-ed-miliband-on-falkirk-and-partyunion-reform-and-what-the-party-is-likely-to-say-in-response/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ben Cobley9 September 2013 at 00:13

    A further extract to a comment I made on that LabourList link above:

    "I guess my point might be summed up by thinking about sports like football, which are successful largely because there are rules which regulate competition. You could say that we need to cooperate to compete.

    As I see it in Labour, that cooperation is often sorely lacking, especially at a central level: those setting the rules are often doing so to suit their factions rather than to enable healthy competition. This is a real problem we have.

    I like to refer to Chris Mullin's last speech in Parliament, in which he said:

    "I count it a privilege to have been born in a democracy and to have served in this place. The great thing about democracy is that, although harsh things are sometimes said, we are not actually trying to kill each other. Differences are ultimately resolved at the ballot box. One side wins; one side loses and the loser lives to fight another day."

    In Labour's internal so-called 'democracy', this is rarely the case.

    ReplyDelete

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