Once again, the labour move­ment seems to be out of touch with the re­al­i­ty of the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic times-a case of An­cel in Won­der­land falling down a po­lit­i­cal rab­bit hole and wan­der­ing around in a world of fan­ta­sy. First An­cel Ro­get, leader of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union, en­gaged in a strike against Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd while the com­pa­ny bat­tled with deep fi­nan­cial trou­bles. Now he seems to be deeply in­volved in the pull­out of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice from the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.

The lat­est ill-judged move is to hail David Ab­du­lah, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the union, and a de­part­ing gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, as the coun­try's next prime min­is­ter. Once again Mr Ro­get and his fol­low­ers and peers are in­dulging in wish­ful think­ing. Mr Ab­du­lah is de­vot­ed to the labour cause and is a man of sin­cer­i­ty and prin­ci­ple-hence his de­ci­sion to re­sign his Sen­ate seat and with­draw from the Gov­ern­ment, hav­ing mea­sured that gov­ern­ment and found it want­i­ng.

But for all Mr Ab­du­lah's virtue, re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, what are the chances of the MSJ be­ing able to present it­self as a vi­able po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tive to the PP and the ma­jor­i­ty op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment? Even with­in the rul­ing PP coali­tion, from which it has now with­drawn, the par­ty didn't seem to have much po­lit­i­cal clout and its de­par­ture has not had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the part­ner­ship. Its for­mer leader Er­rol Mc Leod and his Pointe-a-Pierre seat re­main firm­ly in the PP cor­ner.

The fact is, too, that labour par­ties go­ing back to the Trinidad Labour Par­ty, the But­ler Par­ty, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty and the Unit­ed Labour Front-par­ties with far larg­er per­cent­ages of po­lit­i­cal sup­port than the MSJ-have failed to gain the crit­i­cal mass they need­ed to have any re­al­is­tic chance of suc­cess at the polls.

The labour lead­ers who have been per­suad­ed by Mr Ab­du­lah and Mr Ro­get to adopt the path of go­ing it alone as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty would do bet­ter to con­cen­trate on bring­ing mean­ing­ful 21st-cen­tu­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tion to their mem­bers at the job site. That is what their mem­bers pay them to do-the core busi­ness of trade unions.

Even in that field, re­al­is­ing uni­ty of pur­pose and ac­tion with­in the labour move­ment it­self ap­pears to be be­yond the reach of the MSJ and its as­so­ciates. Al­ready the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion has made it clear that it will not be part of that un­wise for­ay in­to par­ty po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in op­po­si­tion to the rul­ing PP and the op­po­si­tion PNM.

So too has the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers, James Lam­bert, who has been scarce on the MSJ plat­form and is in fact of­ten seen as­so­ci­at­ing with po­lit­i­cal com­pa­ny from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion did not even take part in the tra­di­tion­al Labour Day gath­er­ing in Fyz­abad.

If the labour move­ment can't unite even on the most fun­da­men­tal is­sues, why should its lead­ers imag­ine they can sud­den­ly form a suc­cess­ful labour par­ty when they have ab­solute­ly no ex­pe­ri­ence and no rea­son to be­lieve they have pop­u­lar sup­port? In 2012, does talk of vot­ing "along class lines" re­al­ly have mass ap­peal-if it ever did?

In the cir­cum­stances, the best ad­vice that could be giv­en to the labour lead­ers would be to fo­cus on mod­ern and sen­si­ble in­dus­tri­al-re­la­tions prac­tices on be­half of their mem­bers. The pos­si­bil­i­ties of the MSJ gain­ing any se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal trac­tion be­tween now and 2015, when elec­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, are re­mote at best.

Labour lead­ers need to look at them­selves and their ap­proach­es to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. Get­ting em­broiled in par­ty pol­i­tics now is not go­ing to help them, and might even be a fa­tal dis­trac­tion.