So in the wake of this whole Abrahams thing, the New Labourites are plotting to destroy the Union link, something they've been keen on doing for years but have so far been unable to.

This will prevent Trade Unions from funding the Labour Party, their contributions would have to be dramatically reduced, and as such radically change how the Labour Party operates, it will force trade unionists to essentially make individual donations (and I can't see many doing that with how the government are carrying on)

Grimmer has been following this for the last few days (here and here).

She's right, if this goes ahead it'll be the final nail in the coffin of the Labour Party. Lenin said the Labour Party was a bourgeois-workers party, such a move would turn it into a bourgeois party, it would break its connection to the working class. A party unconnected to the workers is not something I want to be part of.

LABOUR MP John McDonnell demanded that the Brown government make "a choice between democracy or oligarchy" at the weekend.

At Saturday's Hands Off Venezuela national conference in London, he condemned new Labour's ongoing hostility towards Venezuela and pledged to make solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution an issue that "no MP would be allowed to dodge."

Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack roused the 200 activists present when he attacked the hypocrisy of the British government in accusing Venezuela of corruption last week.

He recalled the recent privatisation of Ministry of Defence research division QinetiQ, which saw senior managers pocketing some 20,000 per cent profit.

Conference approved five motions, including one on the forthcoming constitutional reform, which condemned international media smear campaigns and "economic sabotage" by capitalist states.

Delegates also blasted the recent "biased and misleading" This World programme on BBC2, presented by journalist John Sweeney, which quoted claims by pressure group Transparency International that Venezuela is the second most corrupt country in the Americas.

More here...

John McDonnell:

In the past political parties brought together their supporters to debate, discuss and decide the policies which were then drafted into a manifesto and placed before the electorate. If there was sufficient support for the policies and the party was elected, new ministers would arrive into office with civil servants waiting with advice on how to implement the policy programme. The battle for an incoming Labour government was with the vested interests of the status quo which had largely permeated government and all its departments.

Trade unions need to forget this archaeological exhibit of constitutional theory. The modern reality is that policy may still be debated within the Labour party but this policy debate and even decision making is rarely translated into the manifesto which is drafted internally by the Prime Minister’s closest aides. Once in office ministers responsible for policy implementation are now surrounded by a policy network dominated by advisers drawn from or even directly representing private sector interests. Dominating centralised control means that no policy which contradicts the core ideology of the government is allowed to surface.

The core ideology is shared by both main political parties. That is why Gordon Brown has found it so easy to appoint Tories to be part of his government. Both parties share a neo liberal ideology which believes that the market must be given free reign and as a result will produce the optimum solution in virtually every instance. Consequently both share an evangelical zeal for flexible labour, privatisation, low corporate taxation and corporate driven globalisation.

And a little something for Brown's Stalinisation of the party:

First, trade unions need to ensure that what limited opportunities for influencing policy debate within the Labour party still exist are maintained by rejecting at this year’s Labour Party conference the imposition of the Brown proposals to undermine Labour Party conference policy making powers.

Second we mobilise immediately a new alliance across the unions, constituency Labour Parties, affiliates and linking with supporters within the Parliamentary Labour Party to reassert democracy within the Labour Party at every level.

More of course on John McDonnell's blog. I've also come across something on the Morning Star on this topic, it highlights the matter quite well.

The prison workers are today out on strike. Most of the press are blasting the strike action as being illegal, and will cause chaos in the prison system.

Why are the prison workers on strike? Because 9 out of 10 members of the Prison Officers Association voted to strike, they're being run into the ground like so many other public service workers, privatisation looms on the horizon, this year they were given a pitiful 1.5% pay rise in April, and are due to get 1% in October. This is utterly pathetic, this is the fifth year running they've had a pay cut, due to below inflation pay "rises".

All the Tory press can say is its illegal and the government is taking the Prison Officers Association to court over its illegal action. Let's not forget why it's illegal. It's illegal because the Tory government made it illegal in 1993. So forgive me if I consider such laws to be oppressive and worthy of being thrown out onto the scrap heap of bourgeois reaction. Labour's 12 month notice is a joke.

The way they are being treated by this so called Labour government is disgusting.