On Any Questions last Friday, Graham Brady (chair of the 1922 committee) offered his analysis of the recent controversy over Unite’s role in the selection of a replace for Falkirk MP Eric Joyce. Brady opined that the real problem facing political parties was to recruit more members so as to prevent this sort of influence being exercised on a local level. It’s rare to hear a politician discuss the precipitous drop in party membership over the last half century in the same breath as the role of trade unions in political life. The Government’s own statistics report that trade unions in the UK had 7,261,000 members in 2010/11. The alleged threat to democracy which is the Unite union has 1,474,564 members. In contrast a parliamentary report published at the end of last year reported that “Labour has about 193,000 members, the Conservatives between 130,000 and 170,000 and the Liberal Democrats 49,000”. So in other words: Unite has far more members than the three main political parties combined. It may very well be the case that a lack of local members allowed Unite to exercise a local influence but to use this as a basis to attack the union as an ‘anti-democratic influence’ is absurd and dishonest if it is not accompanied by a recognition of the indisputable fact that the trade unions are the largest democratic members organisations in the United Kingdom.
Mark Carrigan 