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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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Roger Warren Evans |
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item0039D 696, 697 696 Easter Monday 21 April 2003 Union shop, Kevin Curran, the new GMB General Secetary, was wrong to advocate the return of the "closed shop". As the successor to John Edmonds, he should be ploughing other furrows. I have no time for the Labour Minister Alan Johnson, castigating Curran for "returning to the Planet of Zog" by referring to the closed shop - the language was intemperate, and a mark of Johnson's political inexperience. But the subject is indeed a very old one. It was once all the rage in leftwing circles. In Autumn 1959, when I toured America representing the Cambridge Union on the great Debating Tour, one of the principal motions we debated was "This House prefers the Union Shop to the Closed Shop". And we had to immerse ourselves in the niceties of American trade union law and regulation. The key political issue, on both sides of the Atlantic, was that of accommodating union power. But that was then, and this is now. The key issue is now the development of the individual worker's rights, which trade unions enforce and uphold. There is a fundamental legal and political distinction to be drawn between the collective powers of trade unions as organisations and those of the individual worker Workers' Rights, not Union Rights. With less than 30% of UK workers in membership of any trade union (and with private sector membership much lower, at less than 15%) it makes no political sense whatever to rely on "union rights" for any kind of general worker protection. The only sensible way forward is to strengthen, and facilitate the enforcement of, individual worker's rights.  True, trade union membership remains an important feature of public
service employment, and that is good. But worker exploitation is
inherently less likely in the public sector, because of its very exposure to
public scrutiny. Corporate sector employees are more likely to be
exposed to the abuse of power - and it is their protection which must be our
principal concern.
Ditch the history, Kevin -
and get on with the real issues of workplace injustice. There are
already too many of your colleagues bidding for political glory by
reasserting trade union power within the Labour Party - that is old hat, and
a danger to the future of the Party. The need is for the trade union
movement to develop its role as the workers' advocates and champions,
countering the global abuse of corporate power Do you have any experience of the closed or union shop system? Drop me a line
697 Easter Monday 21 April 2003 Letter to The Guardian Dear Sir In 1989, an international team of lawyers assembled by LIBERTY visited Belfast following Pat Finucane's murder. They found that emergency legislation, breaching human rights standards, had created "a system of criminal justice weighted significantly against the accused". Defence lawyers were the subject of open, official distrust (and alleged RUC smears), were wrongly associated by Police and press with the politics of their clients, and were vulnerable to intimidation and attack.
John Wadham Director, LIBERTY Do you share my perception of the human rights agenda as the future carrier of the socialist message? Drop me a line
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They also
found "convincing evidence of [British authorities'] unlawful "dirty
tricks"; and called for investigation of the links between those running
undercover operations and those who briefed then Home Office Minister
Douglas Hogg to claim, in Parliament, "as a fact" that there were "in the
Province a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of
the IRA". They had no doubt that this statement contributed powerfully
to the climate in which Pat Finucane was murdered, just three weeks later.