Back to main newsBombshells at the TUC - The 2009 conference went out not with a whimper but with an almighty bang
Tue 22 Sep 2009
Author: There are rarely any fireworks on show at the last day of TUC Congress. It's a day for tying up loose ends and clearing up unfinished business, not heated debates and bold statements of intent.
Not this year. The 2009 conference went out not with a whimper but with an almighty bang. Two of them, in fact.
The first - Congress's decision to back the People's Charter - was a bold and important decision, if not controversial. No trade unionist should have to think twice about backing its six basic demands for decent jobs, homes, benefits and public services, a fair and democratic economy and a peaceful, sustainable future.
The only question is how to win those demands. And so the big debate in Liverpool focused not on the charter's content but whether Labour can still, at this late hour, be made to support it. The TUC's verdict is Yes. And this should be a warning to ministers that they are drinking in the last-chance saloon.
There is a week to go until Labour's own conference - the party's last before it sets its policies before the voters some time early next year. If Labour does not change, if it does not embrace the People's Charter for Change, it will lose. Simple as that.
It is way behind the Tories in the polls thanks to its illegal wars, its love of privatisation and its desertion of working people. All of these can be addressed. And the People's Charter tells Labour how to do it.
It is up to Labour now to prove it can change. Up to the working-class activists to win it back from the new Labour clique which has taken over their party.
And up to the unions to back words with action, to follow yesterday's vote with an all-out fight to turn the charter into reality.
It's a huge task. But it can be done. And it's not nearly as daunting as the task the TUC set itself when it dropped its second bombshell at Congress yesterday.
Israel's occupation of Palestine remains one of the most hotly debated issues within the labour movement, never mind the wider British public.
So it's not surprising that the final motion passed by the TUC was not as strong as the original wording.
But make no mistake. This vote for a boycott of goods from the illegal settlements is still historic.
It throws the weight of Britain's seven million trade unionists behind the growing campaign against Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
And it invites comparisons between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa - which was brought down, in part, by a global boycott campaign which Britain's trade unions were proud to back.
This boycott will be tougher to pursue. Just look at the howls of protest which greeted lecturers' union UCU when it voted for an academic boycott of Israel - a decision it eventually reversed.
But this boycott is the right thing to do. British workers should have nothing to do with the tainted products of a regime which starves, bombs and imprisons millions of innocents.
And the tide is turning against that regime. Israel's brutal assault on Gaza early this year has led many of Tel Aviv's supporters to rethink their position.
This week's report by UN investigators, concluding that Israel committed war crimes in that onslaught, dealt a further blow to those who defend its actions. And it made clear that this boycott is not about anti-semitism - it is about simple humanity.
It is about solidarity with the oppressed. It is about the relief of suffering. And it is about doing everything we can to rein in a murderous rogue state.
Britain's labour movement has stood up on behalf of the Palestinian people and said loud and clear: "Enough. No more."
Now, for the sake of the Palestinian people, it must hold firm to its promise.
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