That’s the headline on a post over on Labour Uncut, and they have the full internal Unite strategy document to corroborate those claims:
The strategy is a powerful statement of intent. It’s clear that Unite intend to fundamentally change Labour…
In one passage, plans are set out to recruit 5000 new members from Unite into the Labour party. But this is no altruistic membership drive; the purpose of this influx of activists is to control local constituency parties…
The document goes on to outline how these new activists will be marshalled by Unite’s political structures to act as a bloc within CLPs. There will be, “Early meetings of Unite Labour party members in CLPs – an RPC and RPO responsibility”.
RPC stands for Regional Political Committee which brings together Unite’s regional political leadership while RPO refers to the Regional Political Officer, who is responsible for delivering the union’s political plan on the ground.
The strategy is explicit that the Regional Political Committees and Regional Political Officers will ultimately be held accountable by the Executive Council to deliver Unite’s political plans for Labour.
You can read the full post and the strategy document here.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
10 Comments
We should really not be surprised that the current leadership vacuum at the top of the Labour Party should be exploited by what is essentially a significant source of funding for Labour. It’s quite comparable to a minority shareholder increasing their stake in a company to take a controlling majority. What is interesting is that they are quite so open about it, more akin to an agressive takeover bid! Who’d have thought Unite would be so keen to use market mechanisms to further their aims?
I’d rather have Unite running the country than arch-Tory David Laws, who is currently being feted over at Conservative Home for his right wing policies.
Reminiscent of Militant Tendency and their entryism of Labour back in the 80s. This will cause a backlash which will scare some future Labour conference.
Is Unite the only union with this kind of coherent strategy? Would it seem so bad if they were all doing it?
Good news for people who want to see Labour becoming completely unelectable, bad news for people who want a genuine debate in politics, rather than a yaa boo shouting match.
I think the problems within the Liberal Democrats should be what you are concentrating on, not on what Labour may or may not be doing.
Labour will probably be the party in power in 2015 and could possibly be the party the LibDems need to give support to in a coalition govt.
@ Neil – I have to confess I lean towards the former. 😉
I am a member of Unite but not a member of the Labour Party and I have never voted Labour. I have voted Lib Dem many times. Personally, I care little whether a few people in Unite are pusuing a scheme to increase their influence in the Labour Party. They will probably fail due to the usual apathy that besets trade unions and even if they do succeed, why should I as a voter and worker care less about the way in which the Labour Party is run? In some ways, 5,000 members of Unite joining the Labour Party strikes me as less of a threat to democracy than a few offshore-based millionaires funding the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. Meanwhile, back in the real world away from political blogs, hundreds of people are being made redundant in local companies. Who should the staff turn to for advice? Their trade unions or the Lib Dem leadership?
and this is why the liberald emocrats are needed and were founded, to stop unelected union barons running the country
I’m a UNISON member and steward and have opted out of paying a political levy to the Labour Party. Yet I am constantly bombarded with Labour propaganda by post and by email. I pointed out that this is a huge waste of money for UNISON if lots of members keep putting expensive leaflets in the bin, but was told roundly by members of the Exec (one of whom is an NEC member) that it would cost less to send them out universally than selectively.