"Move away from moderate traditions"
By Krishna Guha, Political Correspondent
The Economist
July 18 2002 20:29
Sir Ken Jackson's apparent defeat by an almost unknown leftwing rival is a defining moment in the history of the Labour movement.
The unions that now form his half of the Amicus super-union - the engineers' union AEU and electricians' union EETPU - were the rock on which moderate Labour withstood the challenge from the extreme left in the 1970s and 1980s. Their block votes, cast by rightwing union barons representing skilled manufacturing workers, helped successive Labour leaders defeat Bennite and Militant activists. By sticking with Labour through the early 1980s, they deprived the breakaway Social Democratic party of any support from organised labour.
And they gave indispensable backing, first to Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair, in the battles for internal reform that ended in the creation of New Labour.
The merger of the two unions in 1992 was seen as entrenching a permanent moderate majority and creating a formidable bulwark on the right wing of the labour movement.
Yet now their members have voted for Derek Simpson, an openly leftwing leader and former communist...
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