POLITICS
Mr Smith prepares to fight the hand that bleeds him
SIMON HEFFER
No one seems to have noted a com- pelling case for Mr Major to call a snap election. At its 1991 conference Labour decided, sensibly, to scrap its procedure for candidate selection as it was a mess. So far, it has yet to determine a new one, though it has an emergency procedure for by-elec- tions. Were Mr Major to tell the Queen that his tribulations required a dissolution, there would be consternation in his own party at an apparent suicide leap. But in the Labour Party, which has selected no candidates at all and still lacks the means to do so, there would be complete chaos.
A proposed new procedure for selection is one element of a package of rule-changes that Labour must agree — or disagree upon at its annual conference at Brighton in two months' time. The package also includes abolition of the block vote on poli- cy questions at the conference. This reform is known as OMOV, not a detergent but an acronym representing One Member One Vote. There is already one member one vote, but the member who has the vote is the leader of a trades union. Mr Smith, the Labour leader, and his fashionably youthful modernisers like Mr Tony Blair and Mr Gordon Brown recognise this is no position for a supposedly progressive party. They want the franchise confined to individual members. On Monday the party's National Executive Committee endorsed a set of reforms by 20 votes to 7, the seven dis- senters comprising Mr Tony Benn and six trades unionists. Five union representatives supported Mr Smith. A period of what a spokesman for Mr Smith calls 'quiet per- suasion' of union leaders to accept the package has begun. It may help him a little that the unions themselves are split on the proposals. However, some union leaders recall it was their movement that founded the party, and not the other way round.
Despite the disarray of the Government, these are not good times for Mr Smith. His party has suffered a six-point drop in the opinion polls (the beneficiaries being the Liberal Democrats) during the last couple of months. That decline has coincided with regular television news highlights from var- ious union annual conferences. Normally of no consequence to anyone apart from the landladies of the seaside resorts in which they are held, these events have assumed great significance this summer. One by one, the unions have vituperated against the Smith reforms. It was no handicap to them that, at the time of most of the conferences, it was not settled what those reforms would be. The very idea of change of whatever sort was repugnant enough. Tieless, side- burned men in symphonies of polyester have screeched against change, to applause from fellow members of the Jurassic Ten- dency. At Westminister, the sharp-suited modernisers have been sick as pterodactyls.
The Schleswig-Holstein question seems simple compared with the relationship between Labour and the unions. The unions have 40 per cent of the say in candi- date selection and control 70 per cent of the votes at party conferences. Mr Smith is seeking to 'quietly persuade' them to use their block vote to abolish their block vote. Never ones to waste time searching for an original metaphor (`this is not a case of the tail wagging the dog. We are the dog' etc.) the unions talk of 'turkeys voting for Christmas'. But if such a Christmas does not come this autumn, it will come at the next election. 'It doesn't matter how awful the Tories are,' a Labour front-bencher told me. 'They may well not win the next election, but unless we get the unions out of the picture, we aren't going to win it either.'
The two principal problems for Mr Smith in the weeks ahead are Mr John Edmonds, leader of the General, Municipal and Boil- ermakers' Union, and Mr Bill Morris, his counterpart at the Transport and General, a man blighted by having to follow 'Prehis- toric' Ron Todd. It would be easy to carica- ture Edmonds and Morris as a sort of mul- tiracial Laurel and Hardy. Certainly, they have in the last few weeks given the Tory party the only comic relief it has had since the election. 'Edmonds is the key man,' says a Labour MP. 'If he decides to support the reforms, Morris will take his lead. Ulti- mately these blokes must realise there's nothing to be gained by being the majority shareholders of a permanent opposition.'
Last week Mr Edmonds addressed a pri- vate meeting of Labour MPs. 'He was roasted,' said one who attended. 'It was a seminal event in the history of the Labour Party.' Mr Edmonds defended his obstina- cy. 'No one spoke up for him,' says the MP. `We just told him all he wants is to have us lose the next election.' The next election is not, though, of much concern to Mr Edmonds. He is more worried that his union is losing members, and that to remain viable it may have to merge with the T&G. 'All he cares about,' the MP conclud- ed, 'is whether he will lead the new merged union.' Those who witnessed his perfor- mance are sure Mr Edmonds will not relent; but they believe his attitude so offends other unions that Mr Smith has a chance of pushing his policy through.
`John is not recognising the possibilities of defeat,' says one of Mr Smith's circle. Another confidant says that 'we have to believe the unions will see that the present nature of their involvement is scarcely an asset. And we have to believe they'll see it this year.' Certainly it would be insane to risk having no parliamentary candidates in place until after the October 1994 confer- ence because the party could not agree a means of selecting them.
Between now and this year's conference, no effort will be spared. Mr Smith will be visiting various union leaders to make them see reason (it is apparently considered more tactful for him to go to them rather than for them to go to him, for it more accurately reflects how the senior brothers see their natural position in This Great Movement of Theirs). He will remind them of the unpleasant facts of opinion polls that show the malevolent wagging dog of the unions to be a prominent reason why many people feel they cannot support Labour.
Three weeks before his party goes to Brighton, Mr Smith will address the TUC conference at Blackpool. His message to them, one of his supporters told me, will have to be uncompromising. 'We might have an election as early as April 1995 so we don't have the luxury of another year's debate. Whatever the Tories do, we will lose the election whenever it is held if we still have the block vote.' If that happens, even Mr Smith's closest supporters see a schism opening up in the movement. `There's only a few MPs who wouldn't see the attraction of an anti-Tory coalition. We could form one with the Liberals much bet- ter without the unions running us.' Such a view may exaggerate the weakness of the hard left; it certainly disregards where the money to run such a party would come from. But most modernisers feel Labour cannot survive a fifth defeat in its present form. At least they have thought about the consequences of an unreformed future. There is no evidence their internal oppo- nents have done the same.
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