[A-List] UK state: trade unions, Michael Portillo

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

This article comes from LabourNet, and continues some interesting themes
raised by Paul Foot in articles forwarded recently to the A-list

see http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w35/msg00098.htm

With the sudden resurgence of left militancy in the UK trade union
movement, we should not be surprised if older anti-labour networks lying
dormant or underused should be reactivated. The key difference now is
that these will be used to achieve precisely the opposite that they were
used to achieve 30 years ago, i.e. instead of promoting British EU
involvement they will serve US interests eager to obstruct it.

And interesting to see Michael Portillo's involvement in the New
Atlantic Initiative, backed by the American Enterprise Institute (Jeane
Kirkpatrick et al.). Should Portillo's backers see the opportunity for a
new party along lines discussed yesterday (i.e. with David Owen's
involvement, as would seem likely given his role in British politics),
he will have been well prepared. And there is, to my knowledge at least,
no countervailing European effort to influence UK policy towards the EU
and US, which means the current power bloc will have to find sufficient
resources from within the UK. Given the division of these (extending
even to the Sainsbury family itself, it *appears*), any euro referendum
is going to be one of the dirtiest contests ever staged in British
political history. Perhaps we should keep this in mind as Blair performs
his frenetic dance for the benefit of Bush & Rumsfeld.


Spies, Lies and PCS: The road to Istanbul
Report by John Jamieson
Published: 22/07/02

Backing Barry
PCS Conspiracy Flashback

Outgoing "Moderate" General Secretary Barry Reamsbottom's military style
coup to retain power in PCS (Public & Commercial Services Union,
representing most of the UK's Civil Servants) reminds me of the
organisations linked to the Moderates for at least 25 years, and of his
own more recent trip to Istanbul.

One of the unions which eventually merged to form PCS was the Civil and
Public Servants Association. In 1978, CPSA President Kate Losinska
admitted that the "Daylight Group", as the Moderates were known at the
time, received finance from the Movement for True Industrial Democracy.
TRUEMID was the brainchild of Colonel David Stirling, amongst others.
Stirling had founded the Special Air Services (SAS), and also operated a
private paramilitary strike-breaking force during the industrial unrest
of the mid-1970's. The TRUEMID saga is re-told in David Osler's article
"Big business and the Moderates - open the books!" first published by
CPSA Rank & File in 1995.

Their cover blown in 1978, the Moderates' political connections remained
submerged until another major leak in the mid 1990's. Documents proved
that former and current CPSA Senior Officers held positions in the Trade
Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU).
This organisation's forerunner the Labour Committee for Transatlantic
Understanding - still shown on TUCETU's headed notepaper - was set up by
the US labour attache Joseph Godson with money from the US Congress and
NATO (see "Who were they travelling with?" by Tom Easton, Lobster 31;
"Uncle Sam's New Labour" by Robin Ramsay, drawing on material from David
Osler; "An Unholy Alliance" by Phil Kelly, The Leveller; and "New
Labour, New Atlanticism: US and Tory intervention in the unions since
the 1970s" by David Osler, Lobster 33)

Barry Reamsbottom and Kate Losinska are both still Vice Presidents of
TUCETU, along with Sir Ken Jackson.

But Barry Reamsbottom's association with NATO goes further.

On 1-3 May 1998 he attended a Conference of The New Atlantic Initiative
in Istanbul, Turkey. The NAI is headquartered at the American Enterprise
Institute in Washington, D. C. and aims to further:

    * The reinvigoration of Atlantic institutions of political
cooperation and consultation.
    * The admission of Europe's fledgling democracies into the
institutions of Atlantic defense and European economic cooperation,
notably NATO and the European Union.
    * The establishment of free trade between an enlarged European Union
and the North American Free Trade Area as a complement to strengthening
global free trade.

The full delegates list makes interesting reading. Barry Reamsbottom is
shown as General Secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union, Trades
Union Congress (UK). He appears just below Norman W. Ray, Assistant
Secretary General, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Eight other
delegates had NATO in their titles.

UK colleagues included John Gilbert (then a Labour junior Defence
Minister and member of TUCETU), Michael Howard (Shadow Foreign
Secretary), Andrew Neil (Editor - The European), Michael Portillo
(Former Defence Secretary), Norman Lamont (Former Chancellor of the
Exchequer), Alan Lee Williams (Atlantic Council for the UK & TUCETU),
Peter Robinson (Director TUCETU) & Charles Powell, Former Adviser to the
Prime Minister.

Amongst the international stars were former US National Security Adviser
and Chairman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
Zbigniew Brzezinski... Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi National Congress
President... Dore Gold, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United
Nations... Richard N. Perle, former U. S. Assistant Secretary of
Defense... and Paul Wolfowitz, then Dean of the School of Advanced
International Studies, Johns Hopkins University - now Deputy Secretary
of Defense in the Bush administration.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sits on the NAI International
Advisory Board chaired by Henry Kissinger with Vice-Chair Lane Kirkland,
the AFL-CIO President Emeritus. Margaret Thatcher is a Patron.

The discussions in Istanbul included:

    * Broadening the Atlantic Perspective: The Politics of Oil, Water,
and Pipelines
    * NATO Roundtable: Making Enlargement Work
    * Business Roundtable: Getting Capitalism Right
    * Defense and Security Roundtable: After NATO Enlargement: What
Next? - chaired by Alan Lee Williams.

Members of PCS should certainly be extremely concerned about Barry
Reamsbottom's participation in such a forum and on whose authority he
attended as General Secretary (not even listed as in a personal
capacity). How many PCS members knew he went to Istanbul and why are the
rest of us only hearing about it from this article?

Recently, PCS General Secretary-elect Mark Serwotka was slated and
practically gagged by the NEC for speaking against the war in
Afghanistan in a personal capacity. Should Barry Reamsbottom be immune
from investigation when he appears at such shady international events
billed as General Secretary?

Barry Reamsbottom also maintains complete secrecy about why he belongs
to TUCETU, his role in this organisation and how being in TUCETU aids
union members.

PCS members, with some justification, are now advocating a plague on
both houses in the current court battle. But this is not a battle
between left or right but a fight for union democracy, free from State
interference.

State intervention in UK trade unions is not a rare phenomenon.

As Guardian journalist Seumas Milne says in "What Stella left out", his
review of former head of MI5 Stella Rimington's memoirs:

"As assistant MI5 director in charge of F2 branch, targeting trade
unions, Rimington supervised the most ambitious counter- subversion
operation ever mounted in Britain. Under her guidance, MI5 infiltrated
Arthur Scargill's inner circle, oversaw the country's largest-ever
bugging and telephone-tapping effort in cooperation with GCHQ,
coordinated the legal onslaught against the NUM and helped organise the
strike-breaking effort. Little, if any, of this can be expected to
surface in whatever of Rimington's memoirs see the light of day. "

Obviously, the Thatcher Government was extremely interested in
developments within the NUM given the miners' role in bringing down the
Heath Government. But how interested is this current Government in the
largest union representing Civil Servants who are tasked with
implementing Government Policy?

Remember, members predominantly in the Executive Grades voted the
Moderates in because they advocated change. They were not voted in to
drag PCS through the courts at members' expense. Members in PCS have the
power and the choice - reject the dangerous right-wing extremists of the
National Moderate Group.