UNITED BY BANKRUPTCY
Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 08:14AM Labour is bankrupt and not just in the moral sense. But it appears that the financial crisis afflicting the governing party has been solved - thanks to those nice people in the Trade Unions.
Britain’s biggest Trade Union saved Labour from bankruptcy by guaranteeing its finances in a secret deal that the party is refusing to make public. Unite, which has given £13.4 million to Labour since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, gave formal assurances in June that it would support the debt-ridden party. Labour and Unite have confirmed its existence to The Times but refused to provide details. The Electoral Commission suggested over the summer that guarantees should appear on its public register. Nothing appeared yesterday as the commission published its quarterly report of political donations. Labour and the commission said that the details did not need to be disclosed because the guarantee related to future rather than past earnings. However, Unite sources suggested to The Times in June that the guarantee was more wideranging, promising that the union would never let Labour go bust.
Now then, I wonder WHY the solidly left-wing Trade Union Unite, would seek to pour millions into Labour Party coffers? Might the relationship between Labour and the Trades Unions not be equated to that between a Pimp and a prostitute? The whores in Labour will gladly receive the financial largesse from the hard left Unions so long as they can stay in power and use that position to fight the class war so beloved of the left. The media is remarkably quiet when it comes to this financial relationship and all that flows from it.
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Reader Comments (22)
use that position to fight the class war so beloved of the left
What class war? Unless you mean the one being wgaed against anyone who is not part of the super investor class?
I have a question for David, Pete Moore, Allan, Ernest and others of their way of thinking.
You continually mourn the demise of England and Britian. You mourn the loss of traditional British industry etc.
Understandable.
Can I ask you, did you support the coal-miners strike, the steel workers strikes, the auto workers strikes,etc., when they took place?
Pinky -
I don't mourn the loss of those industries. I much regret the effects those losses had on the communities that they supported (and which conservatives ought to acknowledge) and that the demise of British industry has allowed our nation to become deeply feminised and more violent and much less civilised.
The British car industry was protectionist, innefficient and its products were rubbish. It deserved to die.
I don't regret that we no longer kill men slowly by sending them down coal mines.
I didn't support the miners' strike, but have always sympathised with the men. But those same men allowed an infantile revolutionary in Scargill to lead them, and he led them to predictable ruin. The strike was illegal and the death of the coal industry would have been much slower without Scargill or any strike.
Steel and car plant strikes? Which strike are you talking about? Back in the days of Red Robbo, British Leyland, three day weeks and blackouts those industries were on strike more than they were in work. They killed themselves, all it took was a tough prime minister and relatively open markets.
It didn't have to turn out the way it did but the unions forced it.
I opposed the Scargillite faction of the miners (the NUM) but I supported the UDM who would not strike because Scargill refused a ballot. As we now know, the UDM got royally shafted by Maggie's underlings (Tim Eggar springs to mind for some reason - dash for gas?).
Many of the strikes in the car plants were communist-inspired (Red Robbo) and ruined the Britsh car industry. In fact, the loss of many of Britain's heavy industries as much directly attributable to militant unions as it is to cheap imports.
I would impose tariffs on all goods which could be made here and the tariffs would be of such a level that the price paid by the consumer for an import would be the same as if it had been made in the UK by British workers on a proper wage.
Pete, why does a British industry deserve to die? And as for 'protectionism', we strive to protect our families, our people and our country so why not have some degree of protection for our jobs and our economy. The result of huge trade deficits is that we now own little of our country and produce next to nothing.
Allan@Aberdeen -
The British car industry deserved to die for a number of reasons.
Its products were rubbish. British cars from the 60s and 70s are rarely seen on the roads because very few exist. They were scrapped years ago. When Nissans were first imported in the 70s the British people suddenly discovered that cars didn't have to leak, clunk, have bits fall off and break down on every corner.
Regarding the stoppages, it was less a case of workers being on strike, more a case of strikers occasionally going to work. This of course was one reason why the cars were crap.
As for protectionism, the best way to protect your job is to be productive and efficient. When you 'protect' jobs in the way you advocate, you steal from me and curtail my liberty. If I want a superior foreign protect but am forced to pay more for it, you make me poorer. Sorry, no deal. This is not 'protectionism' but subsidising someone who is bad at their job by taking from me.
Protectionism breeds laziness and kills innovation. Why do something different, innovate, invest in R&D to beat the competition if your job is protected and subsidised? If jobs were protected in the way you advocate, your clothes would still be made by spinning jennies.
There is no more sense in 'protecting' a job in the car industry than there is in 'protecting' a rubbish musician by making you pay him however few people want to hear him.
Don;t worry about open markets killing jobs - they do not. Your fire would be better aimed at the unimaginable number of laws and regulations, the endless red tape and taxes and restrictions that kill jobs. In Britain alone, millions of jobs were lost or never created because of government in the post war period - millions. It's open markets and free societies that flourish and create them.
Government is the enemy of jobs and wealth, not free markets.
It's open markets and free societies that flourish and create them.
Within a protected national boundary.
Pinky -
A question for you.
The British people have rejected the Labour Party. It's standing in the polls is pitiful. Since the largest block in any poll is the 'don't knows' and since these figures aren;t counted, the Labour Party is polling something like 15-20% among those who do give an opinion.
The Party's membership has been falling for years. From 1997 to 2005 its membership fell by a half and is now well below 200,000.
Naturally its income is in a catastrophic state. Its debt stands at around £25million and bankruptcy knocks constantly at the door. Gordon Brown will never be allowed to forget that he flunked the decision to go to Buckingham Palace and ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call a general election in October 2007. In my opinion he had no choice; the Labour Party simply couldn't afford a general election campaign.
All that is keeping it going are one or two sources of income. Of the party's £7.6m income last year, £1million was donated by JK Rowling, there was an 'in-kind' contribution in the form of a campaign from Saatchi and Saatchi and the rest - the great bulk that staved off bankruptcy - came from the unions, the complete bastards.
The Labour Party is functionally bankrupt, it has been rejected so roundly by the British people it shouldn't exist. So why should the unions be allowed to get away with propping it up, keeping it on life support with the contributions of union members, most of whom are probably unaware of where their cash is going?
Allan@Aberdeen -
I know where you're coming from. I'm a nationalist too, but however much you want to ignore economics, economics will not ignore you. Protect and subsidise for long enough and you'll be protecting and subsidising all the way to poverty.
The dead did not go unburied and the blackouts did not occur and the three day weeks did not happen and Britain was not known as the sick man of Europe for no reason at all.
They were all symptoms of the decades of protectionism and subsidies and socialism that was inflicted on the British people. Margaret Thatcher made mistakes, but it was her deregulations that got us out of the creek that we were well up.
Pete
I agree with your analysis of the coal strikes and manufacturing industry here but not with your view that the Labour party have been rejected and do not deserve to rule. For someone who so strongly defends the historic British constitutional and parliamentary set up I am surprised you hold that view.
A-propos Gordon Brown, the PM and leader of the Labour Party, type 'Gordon Brown towering intellect' inot your search engine and up come all sorts of fawning articles by idiot journalists. There is however, this demolition the 'son of the manse' from October 2007. Looks like the knuckle-draggers saw things before most others:
http://bnp.org.uk/2007/10/the-king-is-in-the-altogether/
A penny (before tax) for your thoughts.
Colm -
I don't deny that the Labour faction won the last election according to the rules. That only 1 in 5 of those eligible to vote went for Labour is by the by. The system is fundamentally sound and shouldn't be changed.
What I meant by that comment was that the Labour Party now so lacks support that it would go bust without the support of one union in particular (Unison, the public sector union and my, haven't they done well out of the Labour government?) and one writer.
We'd still have a government of what are today Labour members since they would still form a majority in Parliament and the Queen would be hard pushed to justify inviting a minority leader to form her government.
In fact there would be a some fewer Labour MPs if the party went bust. Gordon Brown is one of the party trustees, each of whom are liable for the debts. In the event of bankruptcy he'd be up for quite a few million, more than he has, and anyone declared bankrupt cannot be an MP.
I cannot deny this prospect excites me beyond most things I've experienced.
Allan@Aberdeen -
Peter Hitchens and thingy ... erm ... thinking thinking ... the gay ex-Tory MP, now a Times columnist ... Matthew Parrish, that's the fella, are the only two mainstream journos/writers I ever read who called Brown out for witless dullard he actually is.
If any of the rest claim to have done, they're probably lying in the way that they did when Blair became unpopular and his scribbling fellators duly followed suit.
That article is about as good a summary of Brown as there is. Why the BNP doesn't stick to this kind of thing bemuses me.
The entire political-media establishment is so charged to link the BNP with racism that the party whould stay a million miles from race. It's so ready to report on the BNP and racism that it often gives headlines to innocuous BNP-related matters while ignoring blatantly racist mainstream parties.
If you want to see a nasty party, just observe the LibDems in any by-election. Nothing's off limits to that bunch.
But the article - yes, good stuff, absolutely accurate and better than most of the trash in the papers.
'The British people have rejected the Labour Party. It's standing in the polls is pitiful. Since the largest block in any poll is the 'don't knows' and since these figures aren;t counted, the Labour Party is polling something like 15-20% among those who do give an opinion....The Labour Party is functionally bankrupt, it has been rejected so roundly by the British people it shouldn't exist. So why should the unions be allowed to get away with propping it up, keeping it on life support with the contributions of union members, most of whom are probably unaware of where their cash is going?'
Pete, your question can not can not really be answered until the electorate actually does reject the Labour Party.
But to you Allan and others, thanks for the honest answers to my question.
I have been thinking about the question for a while and I wouldike to do some reading on the matter. I think that Thatcher is responsible for the demise of Britian, but that is just an opinion.
Pinky -
Well if you're going to read up on Britain's demise then good luck, there's plenty on which to read up!
No one person or even movement is responsible. My great country has suffered the death of a thousand government cuts (unfortunately, the only kind of government cuts we get) for a century now.
However if you want a few candidates then read up on (risking the wrath of Colm) Antonio Gramsci; Clement Atlee's government - possibly still the most destructive in British history, as opposed to Blair's which is the most revolutionary in 300 years and which will prove to be more destructive than Atlee's; Graham Savage, the senior civil servant who introduced comprehensive education into Britain and who predicted the destruction of high education standards as a result; Antony Crosland, the upper middle class, Oxbridge-educated Labour minister who vowed to close 'every fucking grammar school in the country' - and ...
Winston Churchill, a (it must be said) disaster of a peacetime Tory prime minister, who held this country fast against German Europe but who couldn't summon the will to oppose Labour's post-war progressive state and who set the tone for thirty years of Tory submission to Left Wing economic orthodoxy. The Tories are still to shake themselves out of their post-war acceptance of the Left Wing cultural hegemony, the blame for which can partly be laid with Churchill.
Feminists. Bloody feminists. I need say no more.
Margaret Thatcher is well down the list of Great British villains if you want to know who is responsible for our decline. There are many more than those few I've mentioned. Crikey, I've not even mentioned Traitor Heath or the Queen ...
I challenge you to challenge yourself, Pinky. If you're going to read about our decline there's no point (certainly there's no learning) in reading some dreary anti-Thatcher tome. It'll be dull as well as inaccurate.
The best summation of Britain's post-war social story and the reasons for it are Peter Hitchens' The Abolition of Britain. Do read it.
Pete
Mentioning Gramsi doesn't casuse wrath in me. It just makes me chuckle.
BTW - The greatest acceleration of subservience to Europe occured under Thatcher's watch.
Agreed Colm, she diminished our sovereignty more than any other PM. In her defence, I don't think she grasped the nature of the European state at the time, but then she should have.
On Thatcher and Europe, she did cede sovereignty, but when she realised what was happening (and Thatcher was no fool), she was bundled out of power.
But when she realised what was happening..
What ?. Are you saying she was some sort of gormless idiot. Mrs T was never that. She knew exactly what was happening and her 'swinging handbags in Brussels' act was just that. She never halted or slowed integration one little bit during her 11 years in office.
No Colm, I think that she made her stand after realising what was happening and her statements whilst she was still of sound mind since the putsch against her make that clear (-ish).
As for protectionism, the best way to protect your job is to be productive and efficient. When you 'protect' jobs in the way you advocate, you steal from me and curtail my liberty. If I want a superior foreign protect but am forced to pay more for it, you make me poorer. Sorry, no deal. It is truly united by bankruptcy. This is not 'protectionism' but subsidising someone who is bad at their job by taking from me. Margaret Thatcher is well down the list of Great British villains if you want to know who is responsible for our decline. There are many more than those few I've mentioned.