Monkeys and Backs

I read something the other day about UKIP being the Tory equivalent of Militant, a one time 'entryist' party (a party within a party) which caused huge political damage to the Labour Party in the 1980s, of course..

Now there are lots of differences as well as similarities, but I got the general point and I think it's a pretty good analogy because the strategy of UKIP, above all else, is to undermine their former 'hosts' in the Tory Party, not to win power.

In reality, the ideal outcome of the 2015 general election for UKIP is that Labour wins power and Ed Miliband, preferably as a visibly weak Prime Minister leading a minority government which would allow Nigel Farage & Co their best chance of exploiting the political chaos that would surely follow.    

The other characteristic of UKIP which is similar to the old Trotskyist, 'entryist' approach of Militant is the time honoured practice of making impossible demands, demands that cannot be delivered but that's the whole point - their purpose is to encourage cynicism and distrust in the political enemy even if it means promising big tax cuts at the same time as improving services and increasing public spending.    

Things began to change for the Labour when Neil Kinnock decided to go after Militant instead of trying to reason with and accommodate people who saw the Labour leader as a traitor and a political enemy.

And here's a clip from the 1985 Labour Party conference when that fightback began and saw Labour get rid of what had become a big monkey on its back.

Playing Politics (25 October 2013)

Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, had arguably his finest hour when he launched into a no-holds-barred, full frontal attack on the politics of Militant - a highly organised Trotskyite group, a party within a party if you like, which held quite some sway in the Labour Party in the 1980s.

In his leader's speech to the 1985 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth - Kinnock gave Militant both barrels for its stewardship of Liverpool City Council famously denouncing one of its popular and populist figures at the time - Derek Hatton (the council's deputy leader) - that "you can't play politics with people's jobs." 

In fact here's the relevant extract of Neil Kinnock's speech delivered with the great passion and eloquence which he was capable of at times: 

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council—a Labour council—hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services. The people will not abide posturing."

I was reminded of Neil Kinnock's speech while thinking about the goings on at Grangemouth these past couple of weeks - and the behaviour Unite, the trade union.

To my mind the union's 'leadership' has been appalling and bears comparison with the Grand Old Duke of York - notwithstanding the behaviour of the site's owners, Ineos, which has questions to answer as well.

Unite's decision to call a strike over the 'treatment' of a local union really was a dumb thing to do - and politically motivated, as far as I can see, by an ill-judged  desire to poke the company in the eye and achieved absolutely nothing.
  
As it happened, the whole business backfired very badly and it's the workforce and Unite members who are paying the price for the reckless behaviour of their union leaders which has resulted in Len McCluskey (Unite's UK boss) visiting Grangemouth - in a desperate last minute effort to sue for peace - with Pat Rafferty, the union's Scottish secretary, being quietly pushed aside. 

The point about Ineos is that it has to do business in a competitive marketplace - which means making a reasonable profit if the company is to survive - whereas Unite has been filling the airwaves with wild talk and angry words - raising the stakes instead of calming things down.

So, I hope the change of heart is genuine - for the sake of everyone involved, especially the Grangemouth workers and their families.