How to beat Reform and the right – trade unions must lead!

Editorial of the Socialist issue 1360

‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’ That basic idea of trade unionism is bringing union members to the streets in big numbers on the ‘Together Against the Far Right’ demonstration on 28 March. Organising to change a situation where there is growing fear of racist attacks is part of what trade unions must do.

The next step for trade union members is seeking discussion in union meetings, committees and conferences. How can our unions organise to stop the electoral rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK? How can unions cut across the ability of Tommy Robinson to mobilise his Unite the Kingdom protests? How can the trade unions unite the struggles against racism, austerity and war and offer an alternative when Farage and Robinson present themselves as the alternative to the capitalist establishment parties?

In 2018, the Trades Union Congress representing millions of trade union members passed a motion on ‘challenging the politics of hate’ which included a commitment to “launch a Jobs, Homes, Not Racism campaign to unite the wider trade union movement and to campaign effectively against the far right”. Making this a reality is an urgent task for our unions, the main mass organisations of the working class.

The absence of the trade unions entering the debate in that way helps Farage and Robinson and Co to appeal to people’s anger. The Starmer government is hugely unpopular. Having won a ‘landslide’ in the general election – in reality with a historically low vote share, and with fewer votes than Labour won with Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity manifestos in 2017 and 2019 – Labour is now polling at about 16%! That is because it has continued with austerity and failed to improve public services or living standards. This collapse in support is the inevitable result of Labour’s role, like the Tories, of seeking to defend the interests of the capitalist class – and making the working class pay.

That is what lies behind, for example, the watering down of the Employment Rights Act with no date given by which the 50% strike ballot turnout threshold will be abolished. What was billed as a ‘New Deal for workers’ has been whittled down through ‘consultation’ with big business.

But these Tory anti-union laws are an unaffordable cost to workers who need to fight for pay rises amid Trump’s latest bump to inflation. Our movement needs to demand their immediate repeal. We got a taste of our own power to do so when unions defeated the Tory government’s attempts to restrict strikes with minimum service levels in 2024 – by threatening to escalate strike action.

That followed the strike wave of 2022-23 when workers of all backgrounds were on picket lines, together winning pay rises the Tories had no intention of giving. At that stage the most prominent voices representing workers were not the likes of Farage but actual workers’ leaders. Trade union leaders were on the television saying, ‘the working class is back’. ‘Join a union’ became one of the most searched for terms. Solidarity and united action were to the fore.

The working class had never gone away. The Covid inquiry has ‘found’ what we all saw clearly in the pandemic – that the huge efforts of workers in the NHS and across society were what kept things going. What was ‘back’ in 2022 was a more widespread understanding that the working class had to act collectively to defend itself against the attacks by the bosses and their representatives.

Working-class unity

Capitalism means economic exploitation of the majority by a tiny minority, accompanied by the repression and division necessary to maintain such a system. Workers have a collective interest in ending capitalism. The working class has the potential power to do that, flowing from our class’s role in the production process. Our shared collective experience also contributes to building solidarity, cutting across the ideologies of capitalist division.

 The defenders of capitalism have always used racism and division in defence of maintaining the rule of a small minority. Capitalist politicians are prepared to whip up nationalism, for example to justify their wars, waged in the interests of the profiteers, never the working class. The divisive rhetoric of Farage and Co is therefore able to appeal to ideas that have been promoted by various institutions of the capitalist establishment for centuries.

If the trade unions follow up this demo with a wider call for a mass march uniting the struggles against racism, austerity and war as part of a sustained strategy on the theme: ‘No to austerity, make the rich pay! Workers’ unity not division – jobs, homes, and services for all, not racism!’ it would have an immense appeal and would help cut through the racist lies.

Labour stokes racist division

Like the Tories, the Labour government has shown that minority rights are not secure in a society in which a capitalist elite relies on scapegoating in attempting to preserve their rule. Starmer and his ministers have stoked the fire with policies and arguments that add fuel to fear that immigration and asylum seekers are a threat to living standards.

Trade unions must respond to these attacks too. For example, transport union RMT has been campaigning against the Home Office’s changes to work visa rules which threaten the jobs and futures of hundreds of rail staff. In Minneapolis, workers defended their colleagues from the ICE migrant raids and that organised solidarity showed how mass workers’ action will be key to fighting Trumpism.

Trade unions can also be central to preparing to defend our communities when far-right groups, emboldened by the anti-migrant rhetoric, threaten to march in local areas. This should include compiling a list of volunteers from each union. From this list, stewards and a chief steward with experience could be drawn on each occasion the union movement deems necessary. Such a model could also be organised on a national level to defend working-class protests against attacks by far-right thugs and the police.

Councils

But stewarding is certainly not the limit of what trade unions need to do in local areas. Where Reform UK lead councils they have shown that behind the radical rhetoric they play from the same hymn book of making the working class pay – hiking up council tax and cutting public services. Public sector union Unison reports a 200% increase in membership among council workers who found themselves under a Reform administration after last May’s elections. 

Building trade union density in every area, whichever party is implementing austerity, can cut across Reform’s ability to find an echo. The trade union elections are an opportunity to elect leaderships who offer a fighting strategy, making it clearer to workers why they should join.

May’s elections

For trade unions to actually have a say over local policies, they can stand candidates in the local elections who could act democratically under the direction of the trade unions with a no-cuts position.

This would be a step forward in the building of the new mass workers’ party we need, independent of all the rotten capitalist elites and fighting for a socialist programme: for power to be taken out of the hands of the major corporations and banks that dominate the economy, so society can be run democratically in the interests of the majority, based on planning and cooperation, instead of the poverty, environmental destruction, and war of profit-before-all-else capitalism.

Trade unions taking steps to create such a party would massively build the confidence of workers to stand up against racist division and austerity and its capitalist authors – and offer a positive alternative.