PEOPLE'S CHARTER: Is this an alternative agenda or vain expectations?

This coming weekend the TUC Trade Union Councils' Conference 2010, will discuss the People's Charter. It calls for 'the nationalisation of banks, insurance and mortgage industries and an end to asset stripping, raids on pension funds and corporate tax loopholes.' It asks for 'more taxes on the rich; better and more jobs by [the State] investing to create employment, and a higher minimum wage; decent homes, no repossessions, rent control, and more funds for councils to build homes and buy empty properties; bringing energy, transport, water, post & communication under nationalisation; free heating & transport for pensioners, an end to child poverty & bring back education grants without fees; reintroduction of trade union rights; end cost of war & nuclear weapons, and cancel debts of poor of the planet.'

To bring about this lot, the motion says: 'it is noted that the TUC Congress 2009 agreed to build support for principles outlines in the Charter in workplaces & communities to help promote progressive policies in the Labour Party & [wait for it] to get a million signatures to show that the government must put people first. Trade Union Councils to collect a million UK signatures to show the Government it must put people first and to get MPs and local councillors, particularly but not exclusively those in the Labour Party, to back the People's Charter.'

These people haven't progressed since the 19th Century when the original Chartist Movement set out to appeal to the powers that existed then, with a petition. It represents a kind of strategy, but one that looks to the government (preferably a Labour Government) to set out an agenda, amended to include the above incoherent wish list: a potted program based on vain expectations and, in the present economic and political climate, a total illusion. A domestic colander so full of holes it is hardly worth serious consideration. It is such a weak effort, so lacking in intellectual rigour and analysis, that it merely demonstrates the absence of vision in the current UK labour movement.