Originally published in the National (12/11/2025), SSP Trade Union Organiser Richie Venton writes about the modern Labour Party, workers in struggle, and trade union affiliation.
HAVE you ever heard the story of the worker who did a full week’s shifts and cut back on the family bill so they could afford to give an arsonist the cash to buy petrol and matches to burn down the worker’s home?
No, neither have I – it’s just too far-fetched. Yet millions of workers donate some of their hard-earned cash to a Labour Party busy burning down their rights, wages, conditions, and public services, through trade union affiliation.
In any rational world, that also would be too far-fetched. More than 120 years ago, dedicated, pioneering men and women of principle sacrificed time and money to create the party as the political voice of organised workers.
They broke with the 19th-century tradition whereby trade union chiefs begged and lobbied the Liberal Party to throw them a few crumbs, compared with the outright starvation diet under the Tories.
In what was dubbed New Unionism, waves of the lowest-paid workers did battle with capitalist employers who were often in the same Liberal Party.
Workers sensibly concluded they needed an independent party of their own. Lanarkshire miner, Keir Hardie, was one such pioneer. He eventually got elected as an MP for the fledgling Labour Party.
But that was then. Nowadays, we have a Labour Party which tramples the mild and modest demands of its founders in the muck of neoliberalism, austerity and warmongering. They chase after Reform UK voters by imitating the divisive demagogy and scapegoating of immigrants already practised by the billionaire-backed, arch-Thatcherite, multi-millionaire, Nigel Farage.
No self-respecting worker or trade unionist, let alone fully-fledged socialist, should have anything to do with 21st-century Labour. They are a brazenly unapologetic capitalist party, obeying the instructions of bankers, landlords and big business, bearing no resemblance to the independent party of the working class which the socialist and trade union pioneers aspired to build.
“Follow the money”, the character Deep Throat advised journalist Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men. During the 2024 General Election Labour received more than £9.5 million in donations – five times as much as the Tories. But by far the biggest donor was David Sainsbury, the supermarket chief, who gave Labour £2.5m.
That illustrates how capitalist employers increasingly regard Labour as reliable guardians of their profits and privileges, amidst the existential crisis engulfing the traditional party of big business, the Tories.
In the five years from 2010-2015, 15 trade unions affiliated to Labour gifted them £65m. This truly is a case of funding the arsonists to raze workers’ homes to the ground.
In January 1999, I spearheaded the Scottish Socialist Party’s (SSP) “Make the Break” campaign, calling on unions to disaffiliate from Tony Blair’s new Tories, coining the phrase “why feed the hand that bites you?”
We advocated an end to Labour’s monopoly over union affiliations, demanding members’ right to choose from an agreed list of pro-trade union parties to fund, including the SSP. The RMT, FBU and branches of the CWU unions later made the break, in some cases affiliating to the SSP.
The party of Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar has gone much further than even Blair dared to tread, in their attacks on child benefits, pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payments, disability benefits, and plans for wholesale NHS privatisation.
They are poised with further attacks on workers’ living standards in their forthcoming Budget.
During the 2024 General Election, right-wing union leaders particularly pitched the promise of a “New Deal for Workers” under Labour. But their Employment Rights Bill (ERB) is littered with betrayals of even Labour’s half-hearted promises of improved workers’ rights.
The ERB reneges on the promised ban on fire-and-rehire, as used by P&O bosses to sack 800 ferry workers by video message and replace them with lower-paid agency workers, in 2022. It fails to abolish zero-hours contracts or protect workers from unfair dismissal from day one in the job.
Hopes of guaranteed sectoral collective bargaining rights – to help reverse the great wages robbery of the past 40 years – have been dumped, only applying to adult social care workers and school support staff.
And even there, the Secretary of State will have a power of veto over agreements reached between unions and employers – clearly an insurance policy for a Labour Government hell-bent on cuts to wages and public services.
We could add to this list of betrayals, based on Labour’s utterly false philosophy of ‘social partnership’ between workers’ unions and employers; camouflage for protecting the profits of bankers, industrialists and landlords whilst slashing wages, benefits, pensions and public services.
No wonder union affiliations to Labour are at breaking point. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union – one of Labour’s original founders – has already disaffiliated; the firefighters’ FBU is likely to; and the giant Unite is heading the same direction.
SSP trade unionists are joining others in advocating immediate union disaffiliation from Labour.
But there is no such thing as non-political trade unionism.
Every decision on wages, privatisation, housing, NHS, workplace rights, civil liberties, Trident weapons, war, etc, is entirely political. And workers need an organised, independent political voice; a mass socialist party rooted in our communities and workplaces, prepared to confront the daily issues working class people face.
The SSP are determined to help build that vehicle for socialist change, not through personality contests, backroom deals, or vague rhetoric from would-be celebrities, but with the weapons of concrete, working-class socialist demands and action.
When the SSP joined nearly 5000 others on the Scotland Demands Better demonstration in Edinburgh, our agitation for a 5% wealth tax on all millionaires was warmly received, as was our call to abolish the regressive council tax and implement the SSP’s progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax, to double funding for local jobs and services by taxing the super-rich.
Zohran Mamdani stormed to victory in New York by highlighting a few of the policies which the SSP have persistently fought for, over more than 25 years.
He mobilised a massive voter turnout with promises of free buses; a rent freeze; affordable food through city-owned shops; and a wealth tax on dollar millionaires.
When the SSP joins Scotland’s Climate March this Saturday, we will highlight our persistent campaigning for free public transport for all on a publicly owned, expanded network of buses, trains, subways and ferries to combat poverty, social isolation and pollution – which could create 60,000 new, sustainable Scottish jobs.
Workers and their families who in the past helped fund and elect Labour have a natural political home in the SSP, and accelerating numbers of key Scottish trade union activists and leaders have joined us in recent months. Instead of funding the Labour arsonists, these workers are helping to fan the flames of socialism in Scotland.