Trade unions, political funds ballots and party political funding

Abstract

The Trade Union Act 1984 compels trade unions with political funds to hold a ‘review ballot’ every 10 years if they wish to retain them. Unions argue that without a political fund they could not finance any of their political activities or campaigns. This would particularly affect the trade union movement's long association with the Labour Party, to which 35 unions currently affiliate. Between February 1993 and November 2000 all 40 unions with a political fund are obliged to have held a review ballot. By December 1997, 34 had done so. Using interview and questionnaire data, this article compares the results of the 1993/7 political funds review ballots with the results of the political funds ballots field in 1985/6. It also compares the 1993/7 trade union campaign to retain political funds with that mounted in 1985/6 and assesses what, if anything, trade unions learnt and/or reapplied from the earlier campaign. The article goes on to demonstrate that the results of the 1993/7 review ballots and the associated retention campaign have recently taken on added significance in light of the election of a Labour government in May 1997. The new Labour administration extended the remit of the Neill Committee of Enquiry into Standards in Public Life to include the issue of party political funding. Accordingly, the Committee looked into the use of political funds to help finance political parties and the legislation which presently regulates them. The article therefore concludes with a discussion of the research results in the context of a number of the recommendations contained in the Neill Committee's report ‘Standards in Public Life: The Funding of Political Parties in the UK’.