There is much interest in how political parties are funded. From a trade union point of view this debate really focuses on how Labour is funded. And within the debate about Labour’s finances, the unions have to deal with the fact that the larger, older and ‘blue-collar’ unions tend to be affiliated to the Party while the newer, more ‘white-collar’ unions are not. Indeed, one of the great unasked questions within the trade union family is why have not other unions affiliated to Labour over the last decade or more? All unions, affiliated or not, understand one central part of the unions-politics debate. None of us can do what we know we must for our members through industrial negotiating alone. Politicians in Europe, Whitehall and local government get elected and do things to or for our members. Unions therefore have to exercise influence so that all political majorities have to consider the trade union position on the issues of the day.

The cash for honours crisis provides further illustration, if further illustration were needed, of New Labour’s dedication to favours not fairness. It underlines this government’s abiding orientation to big business and the rich. More fundamentally, the story, as it has unfolded, illuminates the main parties’ drive towards the Eldorado of state funding and New Labour’s sustained attempt to downgrade its financial and political relationship with the trade unions. The view that powerful, independent trade unions are a reactionary constraint on the efficiency of the market and intruders of dubious legitimacy in decision-making inside modern political parties is deeply embedded in New Labour’s neo-liberal psyche. For Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, their party’s historic entanglement with the unions constitutes an impediment to its role as the party of globalisation; an obstacle to independent and opportunist development of party policy by party leaders; an electoral liability; and if, despite the trade union albatross, Labour is still lucky enough to achieve electoral success, a hindrance to an efficient business-friendly government.

As with all reviews, I begin with glowing tributes to a book which will, I hope, be found interesting in its own right, but also can be used to contribute towards important current discussions on trade union renewal and the "service", "organising" and "community" models central to that debate. Only later (conforming to the usual pattern) will I start to stick in the knife with what used to be called, many years ago, an "auto-critique".

Sheila Cohen, Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power, and How to Get it Back Pluto Press 2006.