Now -read the book!

Here is a link to my memoirs which, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can purchase online at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. (William Morris - A Dream of John Ball)

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Unison - Challenge received wisdom!

We are approaching the second week of voting in the Unison General Secretary election and the received wisdom is that most of those who are going to vote will already have done so.



The received wisdom is also that a rank and file member cannot be elected as our General Secretary - and that we must elect a full-time officer.



The received wisdom also holds that a divided left must hand victory to the incumbent - and that the supporters of a failed challenge can expect to be trounced in the next elections to the National Executive.



The received wisdom is that the power of patronage gives an unbeatable advantage to the official "machine" as long as it maintains its unity and wears the necessary left face.



I say we should challenge the received wisdom by working hard from now on to get out the vote from the 80% of Unison members who have certainly not yet voted.



Any members of the Union who get to hear the candidates speak will be overwhelmingly likely to support Paul Holmes. We can circulate links to Paul speaking on youtube.



The triumph of the received wisdom will be if the large majority of members are kept distant from the process of choosing our General Secretary.



If we get the vote out anything is possible.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

2 comments:

nick venedi said...

Hey Jon! Why do you always have to be anti everything? Dave is, on balance, a better candidate and the 'left' has got it wrong again. You could have gone for a female candidate?? That way you could have presented the contry with something different?? But no.... sorry but Dave gets my vote! On the other hand it would have been impossible to get a unanimous decision between the 23.6 different versions of the left and the two morons in PR...

Brian said...

One major problem about DP, in my opinion, is that he doesn't speak well without a script.