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| Union's £75m plot to seize control of Labour |
BULLY boy union bosses have launched a £75million plot to seize control of the Labour party, a News of the World investigation reveals today.
They are using a mountain of hard-working members’ cash to hold the Government to RANSOM and strong-arm their way back to power.
Activists have drawn up a five-year plan to storm back to the centre stage of politics after 25 years in the wilderness.
An insider gloated: “We hold all the aces. Brown needs our money to fight what will be a massively expensive campaign. But whoever gets into No10, there will only be one real winner — the trade union movement.”
Despite a massive slump in membership, the union power-brokers are gearing up for their comeback by:
BANKROLLING the debt-ridden Labour party in return for more union rights and a bigger say over the election manifesto.
STASHING away a £25million war-chest to “unleash hell” on the Tories if they win power in the election.
BAILING out a broken, post- election Labour party and
PUSHING for a union-puppet leader to replace Gordon Brown.
Last year, the unions gave £14m to struggling Labour — and they are holding out the offer of more in the election run-up.
Giant super-union UNITE, which has handed the party £2.7m in the past year, is at the heart of the resurgence.
Joint leaders Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley — who it’s rumoured can hardly bear to be in the same room as each other — have already got ministers “dancing to the unions’ tune” by wafting cash under their noses.
They have won a string of concessions — including full employment rights for 1.3m agency workers — and have derailed plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail.
Now union paymasters want to dictate what is in the party’s manifesto. Their demands include a pledge to increase paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months.
But the brothers have given up hope of a fourth Labour victory and are holding back money to fight swingeing cuts by a Tory government.
Conservative leader David Cameron has threatened to freeze pay for 5m public sector workers if he wins the election, expected on May 6. Militants warn such a move would be met with a wave of strikes on a scale unseen since the Winter of Discontent which brought down the last Labour government. Unions would then be in pole position to exert massive influence on the choice of a new Labour leader — raising fears of a lurch to the hard Left.
More than 250,000 public sector workers are threatening to strike in the run-up to the election to bring “maximum disruption” to the Government.
Activists are seizing the moment after seeing membership collapse from 12m in the 1980s to just 6.2m today.
But by slashing overheads, the new leaner unions have built up a mega- wad of cash to spend on political campaigning.
Cash from wealthy private donors has dried up, leaving Labour no option but to hold out the begging bowl. In 1997, only 40p in the £ of the party’s funding came from the unions.
Now it’s almost double that.
Pundits believe that if Mr Brown is kicked out by voters, the unions will have an even bigger say in who will become the next party leader. Unite, with two million members, is causing most alarm. It has hired Mr Brown’s former spin doctor Charlie Whelan to pull strings in No10 and help influence choice of Labour’s next leader.
Critics fear unions now have an unhealthy stranglehold on Labour, dominating the ruling national executive and controlling half the votes on policy. But there could be worse in store when Unite leaders Simpson and Woodley stand down this year. Left-wing assistant general secretary Len McCluskey, mastermind of the crippling British Airways strike, is tipped to take over.
Unite is now pumping huge sums into a “key seat” strategy to bolster up Labour candidates in marginals — to counter the thousands being poured in by billionaire Tory donor Lord Ashcroft.
And Dave Prentis, boss of the 1.2 million-strong public service union UNISON, has also used cash to win influence.
More than £1.5m of his members’ money was poured into Labour bank accounts last year. But he later withdrew £100,000 as a hint of what would happen if the PM continued to privatise public services.
Meanwhile, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has held “routine” talks with TUC boss Brendan Barber. Hardliners like Mr Simpson have made it clear they are in no mood to join this dialogue with the Tories.
But Mr Osborne said: “The unions have to recognise the difficulty the country is in. We have got to get this deficit under control. I hope they will understand. “But if not, the Government has to govern properly. No government should be pressured into giving way because of strikes.”
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