The Coalition of Resistance deplores the astonishing attack made by Labour leader Ed Miliband on Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey, following McCluskey’s call for Labour to break from the austerity policies which are destroying the British economy and wreaking havoc in the lives of ordinary people.
McCluskey has a strong track record in opposing austerity and has spoken out about the terrible hardships now facing the working class: the cuts in benefit, wholesale destruction of the NHS, the bedroom tax and other measures designed to pauperise and criminalise ordinary people. Unite is one of the main backers of the People’s Assembly against Austerity which is leading the campaign for a single united anti-austerity movement to take on the policies of this government – a vital development if any of the gains of the working class since the second world war are to be retained. McCluskey’s recent championing of the anti-austerity position in the New Statesman has led Miliband to respond by saying that McCluskey ‘does not speak for the Labour party’ and that he was ‘disloyal’ and his statements ‘reprehensible’.
In attacking austerity Len McCluskey is speaking for the whole working class, he is speaking up for the disabled, the pensioners, the young unemployed, those of poverty pay and millions of others. This is precisely what the Labour Party should be doing but is failing to do. The discussion raised by McCluskey is both essential and legitimate: it is over the future policies of the next Labour government and of the Labour Party manifesto going into the next general election – a process which is ongoing through the national Policy Forum. These are real discussions on matters of the highest importance for the future of the working class where anti-austerity voices must be heard and the opinions of a leading trade unionist – who speaks for so many, in and out of his union – cannot just be dismissed with hostility and contempt. The question underlying Len McCluskey’s comments is the crucial one: if Labour is elected in 2015, will it be a government that seeks to protect and advance the interests of the working class or will it be a government that furthers the austerity agenda, destroying the NHS and what remains of our welfare state? This is the crucial debate.
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Len is a fantastic leader of Unite, representing the views of his members.
Ed’s response is disappointing, but for far too long the Labour Party has forgotten its roots and it does that at its peril.
Hear Hear, There has been a Left Wing/socialist vacum in Uk Politics & in the House Of Commons for far too long now gd man.
I used to be in the Labour party but I am not giving them my £22.50 if Umana , Ball and Miliband are going to be polite about thatcher they lost me. Labour people like Len McCluskey areneeded by the party. The delusion that daily mail readers will ever vote labour is why Miliband says soft stuff.Do more doorstep and register to vote work!!!
Len McCluskey, ‘is’ addressing the crucial interests of the ‘working-class’, something that seems far removed from Ed Milibands agender!
Definatly right.
The Labour Party and Ed Miliband should hang their heads in shame.
Well done Len. So glad that someone is on the side of the apparently unrepresented! I am a Unite community member (full time carer for a disabled son and very elderly parents). Keep up the good work.
The Tories have been in 3 years now and what have we had from Unite ? McCluskey keeps funding Labour with our money for nothing in return. If Jerry Hicks had won the election we would have seen some action. You will just get hot air from this GS. Labour are a spent force as far as working class people are concerned.
From what I can see and hear of the MP’s of today most have come straight from public or private school via a university degree into politics thus having no experience of the real world.
Because, of course, should a poor kid aspire to get the level of education the rich get he or she is automatically a class traitor. Right?
I honestly think that the Labour Party views all the gains made by the Attlee government as sacrifices they are happy to make in order to keep Labour MPs on the Westminster gravy train. There are a few honourable exceptions but most of the Labour party are career politicians first, and they seem to view the founding principles of the party as an inconvenience. The CoR needs to form a political party as New Labour is now just Tory Lite.
Couldn’t agree more. Labour is just another neoliberal excuse to pander to the politically lazy, and all we get are self serving careerists. June 22nd can’t come soon enough for me.
I know Labour could be more outspoken against this coalition filth however ditching the party is not the answer you will just end up with a tory government for ever. We must change the party from within there are a lot of working class people who believe that they are tories because they read the daily mail I have two sisters and a brother who believe everything they read in the rag to prove it.
I beg to disagree with you Peter. There is absolutely no reason to keep supporting a party, the Labour Party, which is indistinguishable from the Tories. It is time for all socialists (as opposed to the social liberals) to build their own party. I might suggest you contact Left Unity for a discussion of why your position is untenable. Ken Loach and 8,000 other socialists can’t be wrong!
down with the cult of personality – lets not defend Len and his rear-view mirror take on socialism but imagine a different kind of post-capitalist society based on equity and participation.
I hope that is a clever use of satire, as that comment is the exact kind of PR speak bollocks that is the problem, as it means absolutely nothing!
Len hasn’t said anything I don’t agree with and I am behind him 100% I don’t understand what is happening in this country any more. I think it is far too corrupt now and good people like Len who will fight the corner of the masses (even if they don’t realise they need him to do so) are thin on the ground. We need to keep backing people like Len, give them all the support we can muster!
Let us not forget the “new Labour Blairite trash” named by Len, namely Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander and Liam Byrne who have never been socialists or workers but who feign to represent us while grovelling to the rich and the powerful. In all honesty they should follow David Milliband out of the movement.
The Labour front bench is sleep-walking to ignominious defeat unless they listen to Len and adopt the policies of “The Peoples’ Charter”.
Rock on Len and keep on truckin’.
Being told off for asking the Labour Party to do what the Labour Party ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING!!!
That’s doesn’t make ANY kind of sense!
the Neo-liberal free market Capitalist project is a failure, it causes wide spread poverty and environmental destruction. The scales are falling from our eyes the evil spell is losing it’s grip. We need a strong united opposition willing to free the people not just of this country but of the world from the chains of Thatcherism and her ilk, if the Labour party think that people are going to want New New Labour they are mistaken. Well done Len I am 100% with you.
Without doubt Len McCluskey is right, the labour Party is now no more than the Tories part 2, Ive watched the Labour Party move too far to the right over the years, no-one speaks for the Majority working class of this country anymore, Aftre a lifetime as a labour supporter< I wont be voting that way until the Party redefines what it stands for
Len absolutely spoke the truth and stood up for the people that the Labour Party once defended. It has become a party of spineless, cowardly careerists (although a handful are nothing of the sort), more interested in achieving power than fighting this Coalition. Just look at the debacle of the abstaining on retrospective workfare legislation. I think Len and Unite need to be bold, and start instigating a debate over whether they should continue their support for the Labour Party, and begin to look at alternative parties to support, like the Green Party. The Labour party have let down working and disadvantaged people for too long, and they should not be allowed to take advantage anymore.
I am 100% labour and 100% a union man. But the thought of a left wing labour gov’t terrifies me. Left wing labour is what handed power to thatcher, and surely we’ve all learned the hard way from that. The majority of the country would NEVER EVER support a left wing labour leader ever again. Blair was a tory who wore a red tie, and right wing labour would be the death of so much working class saviours like the NHS. So, who the hell do we turn to ?. It does seem like Miliband is not going to be any better for the working class than Blair was.
Labour have been infiltrated be the right wing neo liberals, I’m a Unite member and branch secretary for a large NHS branch in the North West Len is absolutely correct in what he said. the Labour party we once knew is long gone. time to build a new party and cut these jokes free from the working class they no longer want to represent.
Hi Derek. May I suggest you contact one of the number of Left Unity committee being established in your areas. There are at last count 80 committees established across England to date, with more being formed every day in response to Ken Loach’s plea for a new broad based socialists party. Time to join the 8,000 other socialists who have come together so far.
I have voted Labour for the past 40 years but enough is enough the party no longer represents the people. They are complicit with the coalition in pushing through punitive reforms and privatisation. The Labour leadership can no longer be trusted. I want to see a return to socialist values a fair and just society for all not a neo fascist Britain.
Is it my understanding that the Labour party started by a group of workers fighting for their rights and that was how the party was formed.