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JEREMY CORBYN must scrap the opt-in system for trade union supporters to save Labour from a financial crisis, according to keen ally Christine Shawcroft.
The left-wing member of Labour’s national executive committee makes the call in a new book on Mr Corbyn’s leadership of the party.
In her contribution to Corbyn’s Campaign: Making Labour Awesome Again, published by Spokesman Books next month, she raises concerns that the system adopted under Ed Miliband will rob Labour of £7 million every year.
Ms Shawcroft said the new rules were inspired by Tony Blair’s dream of a party free of union or rank-and-file influence, along the lines of the US Democrats.
Previously anyone who chose not to opt out of the political fund of an affiliated union was entitled to vote in Labour leadership elections.
But under last year’s Collins review, political levy-paying trade unionists must proactively sign up as affiliate members.
There could be a knock-on effect to Labour funding when a transition period ends in five years’ time and unions have their affiliation fee cut to reflect the number of members who have signed up as affiliate supporters.
With unions predicting that only 10 per cent of members would sign up, Ms Shawcroft says the unions would “effectively disaffiliate from the Labour Party” unless Mr Corbyn reverses the rule.
She said: “Now that we do have a pro-trade union leader, it is to be hoped that the five-year implementation timetable for cutting the affiliations down to the numbers of signed-up affiliated members will be put on hold and eventually done away with altogether.”
Ms Shawcroft, a leading member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, says Mr Corbyn must also “remedy the democratic deficit created when Blair, and later Brown, did their best to hollow out party structures.”
She does not support the scrapping of the national policy forum, but calls for constituencies to be allowed to submit motions direct to conference again.
“If the new leadership under Jeremy Corbyn can accomplish these things, the sense of alienation that most people feel from local and national politics can be overcome,” she said.
“Politics needs to become what people can do together, not something which is done to them from on high.”
