Khoodeelaar! updating evidence of Crossrail hole plot-approver Brown's service to Big Business: the TUC's statement [95]

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PM urged to take extra tax from ‘super-rich’
By George Parker and Andrew Taylor
Published: September 6 2008 01:47 | Last updated: September 6 2008 01:47
Gordon Brown was on Friday warned by Britain’s top trade unionist that he was facing a new onslaught from the Labour left unless he took on the “super-rich” and reined in his government’s close relationship with the City and big business.

Brendan Barber, head of the Trades Union Congress, called on Mr Brown to ignore “intimidation” from the City and to levy a windfall tax on energy companies, as well as to make the very wealthy pay more in tax.

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Mr Barber, seen as a moderate in union circles, told the Financial Times that he “cringed” when he heard John Hutton, business secretary, calling for the country to celebrate millionaires.

He warned Mr Brown that he neglected “ordinary people” at his peril and that the government was not showing the “energy and urgency” that trade unionists would like to help them through the downturn.

Mr Barber’s comments herald what could turn into a bruising week at the hands of Labour activists for Mr Brown, who attends a dinner at the annual TUC conference in Brighton on Tuesday. Trade union leaders are already furious at his apparent decision not to levy a windfall tax on energy companies and there is so far little sign that Alistair Darling, chancellor, is about to soak the super-rich.

The Brighton gathering is potentially dangerous for the prime minister, who so far has faced the most intense criticism of his leadership from those on the centre-right of the party, including from Charles Clarke, the former home secretary.

Mr Brown’s worst nightmare – and the fervent hope of his critics on the Blairite right – is that the party’s traditional wing will join their mooted uprising against the prime minister, considering any new leader an improvement.

Although Mr Barber was careful not to criticise Mr Brown personally, his comments confirm the view that the party’s traditional members are becoming increasingly agitated at what they see as his failure to side with the poor against the rich.

Mr Barber said Mr Brown should repudiate the view of Peter Mandelson, the former cabinet minister, who said he was “intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich”.

“I don’t think we should be intensely relaxed and that’s a totem pole we need to drag down,” said Mr Barber.

He said tensions between the unions and government had “got sharper”, especially as the economy had dived and working families were struggling to make ends meet. Mr Barber added that Mr Brown should start listening to core supporters and pay less heed to the biggest corporations, which he claimed had “perhaps an undue influence” over government policy.

Noting that the government had revealed Mr Brown had not invited any trade unionists to his Chequers country home, while entertaining business leaders and celebrities, he said that big companies had “a particular inside track which I’m not comfortable with ... They have an extraordinary level of access in a way we have not quite seen with other governments”.

He said Mr Hutton exemplified what he believed was the government’s excessive interest in championing business interests. “I think he has taken the remit of the newly constructed Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – which has put such an unbalanced emphasis on being the one-sided voice of business – far too literally.”

Mr Barber believes the union movement still has time to persuade Labour to embrace a more ambitious programme to improve workers’ rights ahead of the next election, expected in 2010. But he admitted there was so far no sign of the government agreeing to commit to “something of a change in direction” by closing tax loopholes or otherwise hitting what he called the “super-rich”. Treasury officials say there is no active work being carried out on any new “super-tax” rate.

Mr Barber attributed the government’s reluctance to embark on traditional Labour redistributive tax policies on the “intimidation of the siren voices in the City of London”, which claimed that higher taxes would drive the wealthy overseas. “We have now got an elite group accumulating wealth on a scale that has not historically been seen in previous generations going back over a long period,” he said.

He also accused ministers of being “obsessed with the ghosts of the winter of discontent” – when public sector workers held strikes across Britain in 1978-79 – and for that reason insisting on a “fantastically rigid pay policy” for today’s public workers. “Within the public sector, this dogmatic attempt to railroad through this ... policy is amounting to a real cut in living standards for millions of ordinary people.”

In spite of his criticisms, Mr Barber says he does not expect trade unionists to switch en masse to the Tories.

“The Conservative party has a track record on many of the issues that we are most concerned with which is deeply hostile to the things that we stand for,” he said.

Mr Brown might get a rough ride in Brighton, but Mr Barber smiles when he says he has not invited – and has no intention of inviting – David Cameron, the Tory leader, next year.

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Union stalwart

Brendan Barber, 57, has spent most of his working life as a TUC official. Lancashire born, he gained a BA in social sciences at City University in London.

His first job in 1974 was as a researcher for the Ceramics, Glass and Mineral Products Industry Training Board. In 1975, he joined the TUC as a policy officer dealing with training.

In 1979 he became head of the TUC press and information office – a job he held for eight years. This was followed by five years as head of the TUC organisation and industrial relations department. He was appointed deputy general secretary in 1993, taking over as general secretary in 2003.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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