In the last few weeks there have been many meetings about BECTU's relationship with Labour, as the union prepares for its ballot on affiliation to the party. They didn't all attract record attendances, but the stalwarts who did turn up round the country had a good opportunity to join in the debate.
It's a pity that they couldn't all have been bussed to London in late October for a completely separate event, not organised by BECTU, but by publisher Frank Cass, who was launching a newly-written history of the Labour Party's attitude to the television industry.
Charting more than 50 years of discussion and argument in Labour's inner circles, the book gave a unique insight, not just into the formulation of policy, but also the role of the unions in that process.
Academic Des Freedman, the author of "Television Policies of the Labour Party" couldn't have produced a more timely, or more convincing, case for BECTU to retain its link with Labour. His book, of course, wasn't written with our affiliation ballot in mind, but its conclusions about the influence of trade unions in Labour policy are so clear that I can't avoid dragging them into this thinly-veiled commercial for a "yes" vote.
Throughout the heavily-footnoted pages there are constant references to the contribution of industry unions to Labour's thinking about TV over the period - not all the unions mind you, but exclusively those who were formally affiliated to the party. History it seems has simply passed over unions like the NUJ and Equity which don't have a formal Labour link.
Even though they had views on the industry that were every bit as well-considered as those of ACTT, NATTKE, and BETA, the book's research, including interviews with many Labour figures of the era, shows that the party's ear trumpet was profoundly deaf to unions that weren't formally affiliated.
The only non-affiliated union to make an appearance in the book is the ABS, a predominantly BBC union in its day, which didn't have a Labour link. However it features purely to support the author's view that among the many reasons for Labour's perceived anti-BBC and pro-ITV leanings, particularly in the 1960s, was the absence of a unionised BBC voice in the list of party affiliates.
Television is admittedly only one of many areas that we organise, but if the book had been written instead about the film industry, radio, or the arts and theatre sector, it would have recorded the same steady influence of affiliated unions on Labour thinking during the party's years in the wilderness.
Whatever sceptics might say about Labour now that it's back in power, the union link has paid off in terms of government policies that advance our members and our industries. Any BECTU member with a functioning letter box has already been regaled with lists of these recently, so I won't rehearse them here.
I will however encourage you to use this month's ballot on party affiliation as a collective vote on whether the Labour link benefits BECTU as an organisation, and not turn in into an individual opinion poll on whether each of us feels good or bad about Tony Blair at the moment.
Labour's high command already knows that thousands of us feel pretty bad right now, and if we need to tell them again, there are other ways of doing it.
Among the politicians who have spoken at the union's affiliation meetings was Tony Benn, who also happened to be guest of honour at Des Freedman's book launch. "The only thing that will change this country," he said, "is an elected Labour government, supported by working people and their unions, with a progressive and socialist agenda".
On the evidence of half a century of TV policy-making it seems clear that if unions want to help shape that agenda they need to be in, not out, of Labour. That's why my cross is going in the "yes" box.
"Television Policies of the Labour Party 1951-2001", Des Freedman 2003, is published by Frank Cass. £18.50 in paperback.
Tony Lennon
November 2003
