Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Alec Thraves
Swansea Unite retired members branch, probably one of the largest and most active trade union branches in Wales, invited our new Swansea West Labour MP and recently promoted Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, to address our meeting on the performance of first seven months of the Starmer government.
Around 30 Unite members, ex- shop stewards, conveners and activists, were keen to question the MP, particularly on the government’s decision to end the Winter Fuel Payments, as well as other measures which we felt were unjustifiably targeting some of the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society whilst at the same time Starmer, Reeves and co were cosying up to big business and their millionaire friends.
It was a lively meeting, to say the least!
Before being parachuted into the relatively safe, Labour, Swansea West seat by a Starmerite election machine, Bell was the Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, an ‘influential economic research charity working to raise living standards of households on low to middle incomes’.
Earlier in 2024, Bell’s book, ‘Great Britain? How to get our Future Back’ was published in a fanfare of praise from ‘left’ academics, commentators and economists.
The book, is in fact, a devastating critique of the rising inequality facing millions of working and lower, middle-class families across the UK, jam packed with facts and figures highlighting the chronic state of British capitalism, compounded by 14 years of Tory-led governments.
Bell’s solutions range from a modern-day version of utopian socialism, with big business investing in long term capital growth over several decades and the public sector modernised from a soon to be, understanding general public who will be educated, persuaded and recognise that there are no quick fixes to their problems!
Our Unite retired members re-iterated that they were naturally delighted that the Tories got hammered in the general election but after seven months of Labour in office, many members questioned why the Starmer government wasn’t confronting the rich and powerful, but instead immediately attacking the poor and weak in society, particularly the young and elderly.
Bell was asked why he had voted against the Tory two child benefit limit being abolished, considering those families lost around £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017?
It was pointed out and quoted to him from his pre-election book that before being elected he had loudly proclaimed that this ‘appalling policy……must be abolished’ because ‘the costs involved in reinstating the lost benefit would be £2.5 billion in 2024/25, but that is small compared with the damage being done: abolition of the limit would overnight would lift half a million children out of poverty’.
Even more contentious for our retired members was the Labour governments decision to remove the Winter Fuel Payment.
Our members are furious, because there are pensioners who are dying this winter, due to this policy!
Unite the Union have been to the fore in campaigning to restore the winter fuel payment.
Our members have held protests, campaign stalls, lobbied Parliament (where there was a ‘no show’, and no apology, from the Swansea West MP), and just last week our members held a big protest outside the Labour-led Senedd in Cardiff.
Unite is now taking the Labour Party, to which it is affiliated, to the High Court for a Judicial Review to overturn this disgraceful decision!
We have spent millions in affiliation fees over the years and at the general election we spent a further half a million pounds sponsoring 86 Labour candidates. Members think it’s a crazy state of affairs that we are now spending more of our money in legal fees, taking ‘our’ Party to the High Court, especially after our motion to restore the winter fuel payment was passed at Labour party conference, but then ignored by Starmer.
It’s little wonder that even decades-long Labour Party members of our branch have, for the first time in their lives, protested and campaigned against a Labour government and are now increasingly turning their backs on the Labour Party.
The demand to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and for Unite to initiate moves, alongside other unions, for a new workers party is getting a growing echo.
Bell’s argument, like numerous other Labour MP’s, that he had been obligated by parliamentary tradition and procedure to vote for the governments first ‘Kings Speech’ and not on his own personal opinions and principles didn’t really wash with members!
As one member commented after the meeting: –
These loyalist, Starmerite Labour MP’s remind me of one of Marx’s quote (Not Karl Marx but Groucho Marx) who said –
‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them……. well, I have others’!
It was also reported to the meeting that unfortunately, the day before our branch, the first Reform UK councillor in Wales was elected in a Labour held, Valleys seat by-election, easily beating the Labour candidate, whose vote dropped by almost 50%.
According to the latest opinion poll, Reform UK is now ahead of Bell in his own parliamentary seat of Swansea West!
This highlights the urgency for building a new workers party to cut across the vacuum of discontented, working-class voters who, in frustration and disillusionment with the Starmer government, are turning to Farage and his right-wing populist Reform UK Party.
