Pressure groups and democracy

The best and worst of pressure group behaviour cropped up recently in two contrasting stories. The first is about the human rights group Equal Love. the second is about the UK’s biggest union, Unite.

Equal Love are backing a legal challenge to what the group sees as discriminatory marriage laws in the UK. Yesterday a case went to the European courts seeking to allow civil partnerships for heterosexual couples and marriage for gay couples. This is a good example of how pgs can seek to advance the rights of minorities. It is also a good example of using the courts as a tactic in what for pgs is a multi-level and multi-arena game. Use of the courts has of course become more widespread and more high profile since the passage of the Human Rights Act over ten years ago.

We can juxtapose the above story when considering whether pgs are democratic or not, with another from yesterday’s paper. Unite’s leader, Ken McCuskey (who is elected, by the way - NB that students often state that pg leaders are not elected, and this isn’t true when it comes to union bosses), has warned of possible widespread industrial action in the new year in protest to the government’s austerity measures. Even the Guardian sees this as wrongfooted and evidence of a misreading of the public mood. Are the unions intent on taking Britain back to the dark days of the 1970s when more than one government was brought to its knees by strike action? Union membership is only a fraction of what it was thirty years ago and in this sense if the unions do stike en masse then we can question whether this is democratic.