For the political junkies amongst you in the trade union movement who enjoy dissecting election results, you’ll have noticed how many of media outlets are now running stories telling us what Parliament would look like under proportional representation. Channel 4 has produced a great video report that explains how it would look and why.
As it’s Heart Unions week, this video got me thinking about the influence trade unions could have if we were all members of the same political party under a PR system.
Imagine for a moment, six million trade union members formed a political party and we all voted for it. We would get approximately the same number of votes as the Greens and Reform combined did during the last election. You can find a breakdown of how many votes each political party got here on the House of Commons website.
I think I’d be right in saying that we would have the biggest membership base in Western Europe. It would certainly be enough to challenge the mainstream parties on their policies for working people; however, under First Past the Post, we’d be no better off than the Greens or Reform in terms of actual representation on the green benches.
In the 2024 general election – Reform got just over 4 million votes and 5 seats in Parliament, whilst the Greens got 1.8 million votes and 4 seats. In theory our new trade union party could get 9 MPs in Parliament. This, of course, relies on us getting a geographical concentration of votes in 9 constituencies. If those votes are spread far and wide across the UK, we could miss out completely.
But, if the UK shifted to a PR system, our imagined trade union party could become quite powerful. According to the Electoral Reform Society, if the 2024 general election had been conducted under PR, Reform would have gained 100 seats and the Greens 71. So if 6 million voters voted for our trade union party that could be 171 trade union voices. Now we’re in the business of real change!
Of course, this is where the Labour Party started off. It was built on the back of the working classes and trade unions and for which many of us trade unionists, me included, are members, so why should we reinvent the wheel?
My concern is that over the last 40 years the voice of the working classes is having less impact on the Labour leadership. Some would argue that it’s time to cut the ties but as we’ve seen under First Past the Post, our new trade union party would go through the same struggles as all minority parties.
Proportional representation offers us a viable solution. Under PR, parties will no longer have to focus on areas which what they call key marginals or battleground seats. Politicians in every constituency would have to fight for our vote. The concept of safe seats would be gone. All votes will count no matter what part of the country you reside in. Promises made would have to be kept.
It is great to see the Employment Rights Bill making its way through Parliament, but we’ve been here before and under First Past the Post, the gains we make are too often lost once the pendulum swings the other way and the Tories get back in.
It’s clear to me that we don’t need a new party – we need a new voting system. One where we can make our voices heard loud and clear; where six million working people can have a say, fight for a better future and know that in the next Parliament and the one after that, our voices will be there ensuring that every gain made for trade unions and working people is never lost.
Over the last forty years successive UK governments have played tug of war with the rights of trade unions. The list of statutory obligations on unions has grown exponentially as majority governments have sought to restrict and heavily regulate trade union activity and further reduce the potential challenge to power.
Since 1980 there have been no less than fourteen employment and trade union acts restricting and then, to a degree, clawing back union rights. By contrast, all of the EU countries which have embedded trade union rights, high union density and collective bargaining coverage, are democracies with PR electoral systems.
More and more people are realising that PR has the potential to make more sustainable gains for working people. Our campaign is growing. Just before Christmas over 100 MPs joined the All Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections. That is a massive shift from where we were in this campaign just a few years’ ago.
But we can’t just rely on sympathetic MPs to make this change happen. We all need to join the Politics for the Many campaign and take action. We need to write to our Executive Committees and our General Secretaries. We need to get motions through Branches and policy through our conferences in support of PR.
Unions become stronger when they become political. We can achieve change in the UK Parliament and get a stronger voice for trade unions and our members – we have the numbers – we just need to unite and act.
In solidarity,
Ed Baldwin
CWU member – South East
Politics for the Many steering group