Miliband seeks break from union influence
By Alex Stevenson Follow @alex__stevenson
Ed Miliband's camp is sending out further signals that he is seeking to fundamentally end Labour's reliance on trade unions.
The Labour leader is pushing through a series of major changes to the way the party works, announced in a speech yesterday to the Labour national policy forum in Wrexham.
Shadow Cabinet elections are to be scrapped, the party's conference will become more open to outside organisations and members of the public and the policy forum will be reformed, Mr Miliband said.
The biggest shake-up will affect the way in which the unions, who provide the bulk of Labour's funding, influence the party's leadership, however.
"We've got to change the way we work as a party," Mr Miliband urged.
"We cannot go back to the 1980s, simply making decisions within our own four walls. We've got to knock those walls down.
"We need to build a party which is rooted in the lives of every community in this country."
The unions provide 90% of Labour party funding, with one union providing one-third by itself. The coalition government could end that situation by reforming party political funding, preventing any one organisation from donating more than £55,000.
Shadow Welsh secretary Peter Hain, a key ally of the Labour leader within the shadow Cabinet, said the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were planning a "blatant political fix".
He indicated the shift could force Labour to move quicker towards establishing a new funding structure, however, free of the unions' influence.
"We say our partnership with the trade unions is really important – but once we have potentially thousands and thousands of supporters linked to the party, they will want to contribute in small amounts," Mr Hain told BBC1's The Andrew Marr programme this morning.
"We want to create a mass movement where the boundaries between our party members and our structures and people outside, in communities or workplaces, are broken down.
"We can do that as [US president Barack] Obama showed, and we can be a powerful political force regardless of the right-wing political fixing that's taking place."
Mr Miliband contrasted the backroom deals of the 1980s between union leaders and the party leadership with the New Labour era bid to downplay activist influence in the policymaking process.
"Let's be honest, the leadership believed its role was to protect the public from the party," he said.
He concluded: "Let me be clear what our ambition is: for Labour to be a cause not just a party, a mission not just a programme, a movement not just a government.
"Then, together, we can build the country people deserve."
