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RMT plan to reduce fees to Labour will hurt Prescott

Barrie Clement
Monday 24 June 2002 19:00 EDT
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The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is among a group of senior Labour figures likely to lose critical financial support when Britain's biggest rail union cuts its contributions to the party today.

In protest at the Government's transport and employment policies, the RMT union could cut its affiliation fees by anything from 50 to 80 per cent. The union's annual conference in Southport is also expected to withdraw £44,000 in financial backing to the constituencies of 13 MPs, including Mr Prescott; Robin Cook, the Leader of the House of Commons; Keith Hill, the Deputy Chief Whip, and even the relatively sympathetic Gwyneth Dunwoody, all of whom have failed to sign a radical manifesto drawn up by the RMT.

Mr Prescott, who rents a flat from the union in south London, recently conceded at an RMT conference that it would be the last of the union's events he would attend as a supported MP. Instead, the union is likely to switch its endorsement to a 14-strong left-wing parliamentary group that includes Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn and Ann Cryer.

However, the union's annual assembly is likely to reject a call to sever its links with the Labour Party, which it helped to establish more than 100 years ago. Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT, said it was no longer a question of Labour progressing too slowly towards the union's goals; the party was now moving in the wrong direction entirely. "The patience of many of our members and traditional Labour supporters up and down the country is now wearing thin, but for the trade union movement to abandon the Labour Party would be a serious mistake."

Mr Crow, a former Communist and ex-member of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, said Labour had been created as the political voice of unions who should expect it to "take up the cudgels" on issues affecting workers. The 50 RMT delegates will decide whether to reduce official payments to Labour from the present £112,000 a year to £56,000 or even to £20,000.

The Deputy Prime Minister and other members of the "RMT Group" of MPs have incurred the wrath of the union by refusing to back the re- nationalisation of the rail network, endorse action to prevent the decline in shipping jobs, support the abandonment of the public-private partnership (PPP) for London Underground and the repeal of all "anti-union" employment laws. Delegates will debate a motion today on whether the union should sponsor candidates from other parties. However, Mr Crow will advise against it.

A poll commissioned by the trade union from the pollsters Taylor Nelson Sofres found that 61 per cent of the electorate backed the re-nationalisation of the railways; 63 per cent believed PPP should be scrapped, and 88 per cent backed the right to strike where rail employees thought conditions were unsafe.

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