Ashcroft – One person

Unite – Oh, at least 2 people…

Pissing off a lot of travelling citizens was going to be a (bad) media story for a while to come, and labour would look stupid if they kept on refusing to say anything

And meanwhile Unite being criticised would become described as ‘Unite who bankroll the labout party’ being criticised.

Ashcroft – £5m total

Unite – £3.6m a year

Florence, you are such a typical bloody ignorant tory. Ashcroft is nobody’s friend but his own and he stands to do the tory party a lot of damage.

My union, Unison, gives members a chance to opt out from supporting Labour while contributing to a general political fund. I think this has always been a positive policy as non-Labour workers need support in the workplace just as much as anyone else.

I think there’s a lot of unreported stuff in the BA dispute. I have no doubt that Walsh wants to de-unionise his workforce and has been using some dirty tactics. What Unite think they’re doing is a mystery to me, they don’t seem to be very smart.

Funny way to run things, eh?”

They could always put up a slate of candidates committed to cutting the link to Labour, especially if the bloke (can’t be bothered looking up his name, sorry) running the BA strike is really expected to be the next general secretary. For all its faults Unite is a democracy, just seemingly one that is run by lizards…

If Ashcroft had demanded a safe seat in the Commons for his own dosh, we’d never hear the end of it. Yet when a union boss gets a seat with members’ money……… eerie silence.

Daniel Finkelstein is reporting on a Populus poll of Unite members that shows a majority backing Cameron and the Tories, yet their bosses are supporting Labour.

Funny way to run things, eh?

What was hidden was his tax status.

Why don’t they disaffiliate and start over?

I strongly suspect it’s got something to do with the Iron Law of Institutions:

The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

With few exceptions, like the Fire Brigade Union (which, to their honour, disaffiliated in 2004), the unions keep getting the shit kicked out of them by the Party but then always crawl back, cheque in hand, to Master Labour.

Weird, isn’t it?

Why don’t they disaffiliate and start over?

Now look instead at how Labour is actively laying into Unite the Union in the middle of a delicate industrial dispute with British Airways.

Didn’t the Daily Mash cover this one?

Downing Street sources confirmed Mr Brown had telephoned Unite general secretary Tony Woodley on Sunday to ask for instructions and money and that Mr Woodley had set out his plans for the prime minister to look very angry and use the word ‘unjustified’.

If union members are content to see their money going to Labour year after year despite [supposedly] getting nothing in return (except for the Modernisation fund, of course…) then that is really a matter between themselves and their leaders.

I read (sorry can’t recall the source) that half the likely new Labour MP’s will be sponsored (whatever that means precisely) by Unite.

Great.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: Ashcroft and the unions http://bit.ly/cSAqQG...