Balls!

So Labour will commit to means-test Winter Fuel Allowance in order to prove the "iron discipline" that will be shown to public finances if we win a majority in 2015 (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22748914).



This stupid departure from social democratic principle is supposedly symbolic of our response to the challenge of proving Labour's "economic competency" but can do no such thing. We'll always lose a dutch auction on social welfare with the Tories.



As long as Labour remains within a narrative led by the Coalition and defined within the Westminster bubble we shall continue to fail even to be relevant to the popular hunger for an alternative reflected in (for example) by the impressive attendances at preparatory meetings for the forthcoming Peoples' Assembly (http://thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/).



A promise of "iron discipline" on public spending won't secure the endorsement of the Mail, Express or Telegraph but it will confirm to civil servants striking in the front line against austerity this week (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/pcs_comment/index.cfm/id/1D9CB666-1DC1-46AE-95D2D9BB86FAC012) that Labour doesn't plan to ride to the rescue of public services.



Whether our leadership are just naturally too timid, or whether they are hamstrung by the continuing influence of the well-funded Blairite cabal, Labour is missing an opportunity to inspire, mobilise and lead opposition to the Coalition.

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GUMBISON ruled out?

Back to work tomorrow after half term so back to blogging just in time to learn that Brian Strutton has told the GMB Congress categorically that there are no merger talks with UNISON.



As a UNISON NEC member I'd like to think that, having heard of no such talks, there have indeed been none, but it's as well to have these things confirmed.



UNISON and GMB have been making eyes at each other in public at recent TUCs - but it does now seem we were only ever trying to make UNITE jealous...



Given that our Development and Organisation Committee threw out a protocol developed between officials of the two unions to reduce membership "poaching" it's clear there's little appetite for merger among lay members of either Union.



Joint working between rank and file representatives of UNISON and GMB at a local level is essential to protect workers' interests - mutual hostility only ever ends up strengthening the employers. We should be far quicker to support each other's disputes.



In the long run, the existence of any particular trade union isn't written in stone. We made UNISON twenty years ago - but it is inevitably an open question whether it will exist in the same form to receive my application to be a retired member in another twenty years time.



However, for now, a merger with the GMB would be (for both unions I should imagine) a massive distraction from the task of rebuilding our membership and our strength in the workplace. The one merger which would have had compelling industrial logic and significant political benefits over the past decade is the one which, it now seems, will never happen (at least not with UNISON).



With trade union membership figures edging upwards, and positive news from UNISON's spring recruitment drive, we need to focus outwards to the interests of members and potential members.



And at least now we know we will never have the misfortune to become part of an organisation which would inevitably have been called "GUMBISON"...



Hat tip Andy Newman on twitter.

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Rudderless in a storm?

As the Government of millionaires attacks on one front after another, the political left is bereft of direction.

The catalogue of brutality unleashed by the side currently winning the class war would have been unimaginable even three years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs have gone over the same period as real wages have continued to fall in an unprecedented way.

The tide of privatisation rising across the public sector has begun irreversibly to engulf the health service and now laps at the feet of postal workers.

The demonisation of claimants is gradually capturing the popular imagination as benefit cuts force us back to the nineteenth century.

Legal aid cuts and employment tribunal fees (coupled with changes to rules on remission), together with other changes to employment law further hobble workers individually and collectively.

Even the seemingly solid social gains of a generation of progress towards equality are fragile in this most reactionary century. The defence of the public sector equality duty will be of totemic importance.

So where is the opposition?

The (capital "O") Opposition are sporadically present - unfortunately their official backing is as much an unavoidable necessity as it is generally unavailable for effective national resistance.

Labour can still mobilise some meaningful opposition to "Tory cuts" (as in the London Fire Service) but is hamstrung by the Party's collusion in many cuts in its quest for "credibility" on the economy.

In large part the absence of our Labour Party where we so badly need it is a function of a generation of timidity and inadequacy on the part of the trade union leadership.

The strategic error of supporting New Labour in the 1990s has had cumulative, calamitous political consequences for the trade union movement which are still playing themselves out.

Since the General Election the unions have been pushed into mobilising us as a stage army on three occasions, as if we could still play by rules written decades ago. We can't and it hasn't worked.

Even the largest strike since the General Strike secured next to nothing in the way of meaningful concessions on public service pensions. Laughable attempts to pretend otherwise did nothing other than undermine the morale and motivation of our activists.

The General Secretaries are staring into the abyss and have no more idea what to do than I have.

Out on the further reaches of the left (where I have always found my friends, comrades and spiritual home) there is no more direction or purpose.

Those who hoped the Green Party was a new road to a new Jerusalem can pick their way through the litter strewn streets of Brighton as they contemplate their error.

The largest far left political party has imploded, and those clinging to its wreckage simply haven't noticed yet that it is over (though it may not be dead for years - some people still sell the "Newsline").

The latest electoral project of the far left has broken all records for tragic irrelevance. Socialists might as well practice "entryism" in the Monster Raving Loony Party as continue to place hope in TUSC.

Such is the lack of hope that an excellent film maker has managed to lever his deserved reputation to promote the "Left Unity" project (which falls somewhere between Sir Richard Acland's Common Wealth Party and the political equivalent of vanity publishing).

I too wish their were an alternative to the Labour Party - but no matter how many lamps I rub no such alternative appears.

The political problem confronting the working class in this country, as throughout Europe, over the last generation is the political inadequacy of our trade unions, not the political label of the politicians we can vote for.

This time of weakness and disorientation provokes and encourages infighting. Unable to make a difference in the wider world, comrades retreat into squabbles they believe they can win.

Internicine strife between and within groups on the left will continue to get worse as long as we fail to change the script of this tale of retreats and defeats.

So what do we do?

We fight back.

Wherever you are, working or unemployed, you can organise collectively to resist the ruling class offensive as best you can.

We have suffered many defeats and will suffer more. Lives are being ruined - and ended - and we, who should lead the resistance, are continuing to fail.

So we must rethink, regroup and redouble our efforts.

We may be rudderless in a storm but that is no excuse for failing to keep the boat afloat.

Our trade union movement, the oldest in the world, remains the largest voluntary organisation in UK civil society by a country mile.

We are not weak.

We are not powerless.

We need not be ineffective.

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Fire Cuts Should Burn Boris

I was proud to be among the 200 people who marched through Brixton to Lambeth Town Hall on the evening of Thursday 16 May to express our opposition to the closure of Clapham Fire Station (http://www.saveclapham.com/).



The subsequent public consultation reflected local feeling in that it was dominated by opposition to cuts and closures in our fire service. Having had the unique experience of speaking on top of a fire engine in order to address protestors, I was also lucky to be called to ask a question in a packed Assembly Hall.



I asked about the Equality Impact Assessment, copies of which were not available at the meeting and are only available online (http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/Documents/Sup16-Equality-analyses.pdf). This impact assessment is clearly a very important document, since the fire cuts being pushed by Mayor Boris increase response times to fires in Inner London whilst improving response times in much of Outer London.



The Commissioner didn't answer my question, but offered a meeting with the people who did the Equality Impact Assessment. I'm sure he didn't offer that hoping that I wouldn't bother - but if he did that was a poor judgment.



Lambeth UNISON will hold London's Fire Service to the promise from its most senior official of a proper dialogue about equalities. We certainly need to see - for example - a disaggregation of changes in response times as between those in "high-rise" flats and those who are not, which should be cross referenced with information about "protected characteristics".



We don't make idle criticisms - and if we need to assert our criticism we shall do so on the basis of evidence. We need rid of the current Mayor - whose fire cut plans are as poorly justified as they are intolerable.

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A good day for UNISON in South East London

A little over three years ago I became quite irate when UNISON's Greenwich and Bromley branches were taken into regional supervision (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/unisons-suburban-sigurimi.html?m=1).

So I am pleased to have been today at a meeting of the Development and Organisation (D&O) Committee of UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) to hear it formally reported that neither of these branches is any longer under supervision.

There are - exceptionally - circumstances in which a trade union may need to take over the affairs of one of its constituent branches (where there may have been fraud for example). No such circumstances ever existed in either Bromley or Greenwich.

The three years in which UNISON members in two South East London boroughs were needlessly denied their democratic rights witnessed poor performance by our Union in those boroughs. This wasn't because of any failings on the part of the staff dragged away from other duties to take over the branches - it was because gratuitous and unnecessary takeovers of branches is directly contrary to the best ethos of our Union.

UNISON at it's best is a lay-led trade union in which a solid partnership between lay and full-time officials is founded on mutual respect. At it's worse, our Union is capable of being much less than that, and the regional supervision of these branches showed us, unfortunately, at our worst.

It's not as if we weren't warned. Tom Snow had described the state of the Greater London Regional office on the occasion of his retirement just week's before the dawn raids in Woolwich and Bromley (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/thoughts-of-regional-organiser.html?m=1).

It's sadly still true that the Regional Office has a greater focus on bolstering power within the Union than on building the power of the Union. As long as the office can maintain its internal focus on ensuring that the lay structures never challenge it or hold it to account it doesn't seem to matter that UNISON's Greater London Region has no profile and no worthwhile influence.

Just in recent weeks members have approached me about a branch where - encouraged by the Region - officers excluded a member from their Annual General Meeting and a branch where - guided by the Region - officers managed to secure massive disaffection and significant resignations from amongst a recently organised and militant section of the workforce (the Region are trying to turn that situation on its head by misleading the Centre into focusing on the issue of a protest by low paid workers at the UNISON Centre, when the real issue is the attitude of the UNISON Region to those low paid workers in the first place).

I encourage our members to express their concerns appropriately within our Union, but I often doubt whether, when doing so, I am giving good advice. Even after the experience of the pensions dispute, I do not believe that there is a sufficiently powerful will at the UNISON Centre to hold renegade Regions to account. If UNISON fails to provide an effective in-house laundromat we will inevitably and unfortunately end up washing our dirty laundry in public.

At least though, our members in Bromley and Greenwich local government branches can face their daily challenges now as the masters and mistresses of their own fate, no longer under the unhelpful direction of the Region.

Now they can build back to being UNISON at its best.

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Out of order?

I owe my apologies to the Dudley Branch for having expressed my support for their Motion 111, on the election of paid officials, which made it on to the Preliminary Agenda for UNISON Conference (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/unison-support-for-election-of-officials.html?m=1).

Clearly a curse afflicts all expressions of support for greater democracy in our trade union, as the Motion has now been ruled out of order, following the decision of the National Executive Council (NEC) to ask the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) to change its mind.

However, the SOC may be keen that a casual observer would not think that they are easily pressured by the NEC (by which I mean, pressured by those whose bidding the NEC does).

For Motion 111 is not the only motion to suffer from the rare but potentially lethal "retrospective ruling out virus." Another motion, seemingly beloved of the NEC, is stricken with the same affiliction - Motion 106 (from the NEC itself) on Branch Funding has also disappeared from the Final Agenda, having flourished in apparently rude health on the Preliminary Agenda.

Could it be that the SOC, having given the NEC the void it wanted in place of a sensible debate on union democracy felt obliged to assert its robust independence by pointing out that Motion 106 did not in fact meet the terms of the previous instruction from our Conference which it was meant to address?

Maybe...

On the other hand, perhaps Motion 106 (which had hitherto been timetabled for debate without any need for prioritisation) had attracted sufficient competent amendments that it threatened an unavoidable and unpredictable debate which might have led to a (necessary and desirable - but not from the perspective of the Centre) devolution of resources?

Perhaps, as I blog, some at the UNISON Centre are celebrating the ruling out of order of Motion 106 even more than that of Motion 111...

Perhaps the celebration is taking place on the empty sixth floor? Or the empty seventh? (Or the roof garden on the essentially empty fifth?)

The eighth is empty most of the time too and would do as well.

The ninth is just empty prestige when we have better facilities elsewhere but might suit such a celebration.

Some things really are out of order.

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Monkeying about with pay consultation on the 1% pay insult

UNISON activists - and many officers - are preparing to throw ourselves in to maximising member participation in the important consultation over the 1% pay offer to local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (rightly described by the National Joint Council as an insult).

Unfortunately, the sensible, imaginative and pragmatic approach of using electronic communication to supplement other forms of communication with members is being obstructed and frustrated by ill-judged advice in Pay Bulletin 11.

The bulletin's author was driven to dip their quill pen into the inkwell by the news that branches might use the "survey monkey" site (rather as the national union did during the pensions dispute...)

I am grateful to officers of the Camden local government branch for what follows, as they have considered the bulletin point by point.

Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"The agreed Service Group Pay Consultation Procedures agreed at conference suggest 'flexibility', but do not provide for electronic consultation. (We will look at this with a view to a potential safe means of electronic consultation for future consultations, but this would need to be agreed by Conference)."
 
Camden say;

"We have used electronic consultation before to feed into national union decisions, for example in consultation on initial pay claim, where I believe we had the biggest response of any branch in London. Furthermore even official industrial action ballots, such as the Unison ballot for the November 30 pension strike, had the ability to vote online, despite the restrictive legislation around industrial action.
 
In 2013, when over 80% of UK households have internet connections, and 70% of people use a computer every day, not to mention the millions of people with smartphones - including vast majority of our members - it is inconceivable that we should be denied this avenue for communicating with our members."
 
Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"There is significant scope for abuse of the consultation process through multiple voting using Survey Monkey or other electronic means and it is therefore not appropriate to use it."

Which does beg the question about national use of the site last year, but anyway, Camden say;

"This is completely inaccurate and based on a misunderstanding or inadequate knowledge of surveymonkey or other electronic survey systems. The most common type of online survey used by Unison nationally is an open survey. However we use surveymonkey's closed surveys where personalised individual ballots are e-mailed to each individual member who can then make their individual vote through a secured encrypted connection. This ensures that only active members can vote and that each member only has one vote. The system records every member who does vote and every member who doesn't.
 
This is much more secure than workplace meetings or workplace ballots - as with the former members can attend multiple workplace meetings and vote multiple times, and with the latter ballot papers are not individualised so members or even non-members could fill in and return ballots from people's pigeonholes or inboxes."
 
Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"Our own experience shows overwhelmingly that electronic surveys result in substantial under-representation of 'hard to reach', front-line, low paid and part-time staff. This was borne out in our survey of local government workers earlier in the year. While part-time workers are 55% of the local government workforce, 75% of survey respondents were full-time and skewed towards higher earners. This is presumably because they have access to IT in their jobs and are more likely to be conversant with it."

Camden say;

"Again, this is referring to open surveys, not individualised ballots. In our experience, electronic ballots have much higher turnout than paper ones. In a recent branch indicative ballot turnout from 1700 members over e-mail was 43% but turnout from paper ballots sent to work or home addresses was only 12%. It is true that more low-paid staff in general have less internet access than the better paid but amongst those that do have internet access they are more likely to vote electronically than ones surveyed on paper.
 
And this is not an argument against our preferred method consultation, which is to:
- consult those members whose e-mail addresses we have by e-mail
- consult those whose e-mail addresses we do not have by post to home or workplace addresses."

Pay Bulletin 11 says:

"On-line consultation alone could mitigate against recruiting and organising around pay. Branches are being encouraged to hold branch and workplace meetings."

Camden, tiring perhaps a liitle at having to respond to such foolishness, say;

"This is a non sequitur. You could equally argue that e-mailing members at all "mitigates against recruiting and organising…". Not recruiting or organising of course mitigates against recruiting and organising. The best strategy is to combine recruitment and organising activity like shop meetings with the most effective method of consulting, and shop meetings can be used to increase turnout in the consultation and recruit more members."

Finally (at last!) Pay Bulletin 11 says;

"It is very important that all members receive the same questions, in the same format and that the consultation is  carried out consistently. Use of Survey Monkey could undermine this."

Camden, quite rightly, say;

"In fact, using an electronic survey makes this much easier to do, as questions and answer options can be presented uniformly much more easily than can be guaranteed in shop meetings."

Overall then, Pay Bulletin 11 has to be awarded a grade "F" as a poor piece of work, founded upon misunderstanding and pushing in exactly the wrong direction. The spirit and intent of Conference policy is clearly to encourage branches to use all suitably robust means of consultation to maximise member participation.

There will doubtless those who perceive here a deliberate ploy to reduce participation in branches likely to return majorities to reject. It may be that there are those at the UNISON Centre who no longer believe in national strike action and would be happy to avert it.

However, this smacks more of "cock-up" than conspiracy. It's fairly obvious that our active local government branches have more relevant skills and experience to conduct ballots (outside the strict and specific laws around industrial action or union elections) than can be found at the UNISON Centre. (Who is it, after all, who counts the votes in a General Election?) It's equally obvious (to me at least) that the Camden branch (for one) have a better understanding of the use of electronic consultation than that upon which the author of Pay Bulletin 11 was able to draw.

Service Group Executive members should probably try to assert themselves and bring some common sense to bear on the situation.

In the mean time, activists need to crack on with securing maximum participation in consultation - and maximum rejection of the 1% pay insult.

And the author of Pay Bulletin 11 should pop out for some more blotting paper...

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Labour Link elections - an opportunity for the left?

Tomorrow nominations open for elections to the UNISON Labour Link Committee (http://www.unison.org.uk/elections/pages_view.asp?did=15639) - this is an area of our trade union's work which desperately needs to be improved - and capable socialist candidates are vitally needed!

The National Labour Link Committee is a little-known body which has seemingly existed to ensure that, in the twenty years of UNISON's existence, our Union has been generally ineffective in our intervention in the Labour Party.

The pinnacle of the worthlessness of UNISON Labour Link was probably the vote on Foundation Hospitals during Blair's second-term, when the Government's majority (against UNISON policy - and all real Labour principle) amongst the "UNISON group" of MPs was higher than its overall majority - had the entire UNISON group, on both sides of the Division, been absent from the Commons, the Government would have lost the vote.

The mind-numbing idiocy which appears to have been the hallmark of UNISON's strategic approach to the Labour Party ever since our Union did Blair's bidding in Opposition by moving the "Partnership" proposals to undermine the power of Party Conference (and the unions) is still going strong, as UNISON Labour Link has determinedly set its face against learning from the Foundation Hospital vote fiasco over the intervening years.

Labour Link seriously advances the proposition that we should support, in a Parliamentary selection, any UNISON member, regardless of their politics or record. This approach may create the illusion of influence on the basis that we are on nodding terms with Members of Parliament - but it is genuinely foolish if what we want out of our political work is support for our policies and values. (It may be less foolish if we see our Labour Party affiliation as essentially a vehicle to advance the political careers of a lucky few, or to provide a retirement option for those of our senior officials prepared to sit in the House of Lords).

The "democratic" structures of UNISON's autonomous Affiliated Political Fund (UNISON Labour Link) were designed to insulate our Labour Party work from accountability to rank and file members and - with some noteworthy exceptions - they have proven their effectiveness by ensuring our wider political ineffectiveness in the Labour Party over the years.

UNISON members have voted with their feet, as the proportion of members choosing not to pay into the affiliated section of our political fund has risen over the years. Walking away from the possibility of influence over a potential Party of Government would amount, however, to letting the authors of our political weakness have a final victory.

Whilst the Labour Link Committee may well deserve its obscurity, UNISON members don't deserve a continuation of two decades of relative uselessness.

Socialist candidates - who must be both UNISON Labour Link payers and individual Labour Party members - should seek nomination and campaign for election to the National Labour Link Committee.

Good luck comrades!

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More and more reject the 1% pay insult

There's a growing body of support for the sensible view that local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should join our brothers and sisters in Scotland and reject the employers' pay offer of a miserly 1% (2% below the current rate of price inflation after our living standards have fallen by 16% over the three years of the pay freeze).

A couple of days ago the semi-official "UNISON Active" blog took a clear position (http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/1-in-local-government-only-credible.html?m=1). The position expressed in that blog post - to campaign for rejection of 1% - which reflected the previously agreed position of the Regional Local Government Executive in Greater London - has since been forcefully reiterated in the influential North West Region (whose representatives had originally moved the position that pointed us in the direction of a dispute over pay in 2013).

Such forthright views seem also to have informed the official UNISON leaflet issued today to accompany the branch-issued consultative ballot papers (http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6296a.pdf), which clearly states that the NJC Committee viewed the 1% offer as an insult.

It would be churlish in the face of such excellent campaign materials even to wonder aloud how it was that, whereas 13 Committee members rightly concluded that an insult should be rejected, another 14 couldn't join the dots to that formal conclusion.

It might be equally churlish to pick holes in the threadbare arguments against using electronic means to consult members as expressed (electronically) in Pay Matters 11 (http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6296.pdf). However - since I think there may still be elements around the UNISON Centre who haven't been won to the sensible, reasoned and pragmatic position of rejecting 1% - I can't promise not to be churlish on this point over the weekend.

In the twenty-first century, using all available technologies to mobilise our members against declining living standards strikes me as quite reasonable (rather as a strike over this issue does...)

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The best that can be achieved by negotiation...

Well done to the 13 members of UNISON's National Joint Council (NJC) Committee who supported a sensible proposal yesterday to recommend rejection of the local government employers 1% pay "offer".

I'm less enamoured of the 14 members of the Committee who opposed that call and left us going out to consult UNISON members in local authorities, and related employers, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on the basis that "this is the best that can be achieved by negotiation" and that it would take "sustained all-out action" to get more.

Yes.

Of course.

Tell us something we don't know.

Those weasel words "the best that can be achieved by negotiation" can be translated (when expressed with no other recommendation) as "we hope you'll accept this lousy offer because we don't think we're up to leading a fight for something better but we don't want to admit our inadequacy as your leaders and would be grateful if you would be so kind as to take responsibility for our failure."

After three years of pay freeze - in which the living standards of local government workers have fallen by one sixth (16%) it is truly pathetic that some of those who aspire to lead our trade union are content to acquiesce in a further fall in our standard of living (as long as they can find a form of words which means it's not their fault).

Our movement will not escape from its current decline until all our leaders can show the pragmatic determination and reasoned courage of the large minority of the NJC Committee who backed a recommendation to reject.

Those of us who agree with the wise 13 and reject the timidity of the feeble 14 should not give up.

UNISON's Rules and Conference policy give a clear right to branches to campaign for rejection of the 1% pay insult. We should use the official national ballot paper in branch consultative ballots, accompanied with clear, simple, persuasive and well-argued recommendations to reject.

If control-freaks try to stop us we must resist. Those who vote to accept a further cut in our living standards by accepting a below-inflation pay rise are on the side of David Cameron - and anyone who tries to prevent branches recommending rejection is doing the work of the Tory Party.

It is never easy to persuade members to take strike action - as we must if we want a decent pay rise. But the lesson of history is that it is only ever when local government workers take national strike action that we secure better pay.

We know 1% is "the best that can be achieved by negotiation".

Now is not the time for negotiation.

Now is the time to reject 1% and campaign for strike action.

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No Right Turn

While the Tory right-wing are seizing on UKIP's performance in the local elections to promote their obsessions, those who want to insulate Labour from any possibility of posing a radical alternative to austerity aren't keeping quiet either.

The "Blue Labour" boys club recommend we embrace social conservatism, believing that this is UKIP's appeal to its working class supporters (http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2013/05/05/henry-g-manson-on-the-ukip-challenge-to-labour/). This perhaps misses the point that there have always been socially conservative working class voters - and that they have voted Conservative.

Progress, who prefer some social liberalism as it makes them feel better about their craven capitulation to economic liberalism are less prescriptive, but equally pessimistic, Paul Richards arguing that; "UKIP took votes, not only from disgruntled Tories, but white working-class voters in hitherto Labour areas. There's an important lesson there for Labour too. The surge in South Shields should not just worry the Tories. If white working-class voters desert Labour in the heartlands for the UKIP, it will dent Ed Miliband's chances in 2015. It certainly should kill stone dead any notion of a 'progressive majority' just waiting to be led to the New Jerusalem." (http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/05/03/not-just-gin-and-jag/).

Typically, Progress watch as the political right try to shift the centre of political gravity in a reactionary direction and then consider how to accommodate this (in the interests of their political careers?) They also join "Blue Labour" in missing the point that not all "white working class voters in hitherto Labour areas" have necessarily been Labour voters.

The fact that Labour lost no seats (and probably - directly - very few votes) to UKIP does not mean that we should sit back and simply enjoy the Tories losing votes. If we do that, Farage will pull Cameron to the right and Progress will link arms with "Blue Labour" to push the Shadow Cabinet in the same direction. That way leads away from the path to popular support for a Government carrying out policies in the interests of working people.

Socialists within the Labour Party and trade unions need to organise far more effectively to mobilise support for a radical alternative to austerity, the formal basis for which can be found in the policies of the trade unions - who need, as I was saying (http://www.jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/unions-need-to-answer-ukip.html?m=1) massively to raise our political game.

As implausible as this may seem to some, we need to try to do this from within the Labour Party. Attempts to build a "UKIP of the left" outside Labour's ranks are proving lamentably unsuccesful.

The candidate of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) standing for Hampshire County Council in Eastleigh who was beaten by the candidate of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (http://election.hants.gov.uk/hwdivisionresult.aspx?year=2013&id=175&distid=2&divelecid=4423) may have been particularly unfortunate, but anyone who came away from last week's elections thinking that the time is right for a socialist electoral challenge to Labour probably wasn't paying attention.

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Unions need to answer UKIP

The local election results are not good.

Our Party is not where it needs to be now to win a General Election in 2015 (http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/local-elections-labour-isnt-where-it-needs-be-win).

Opposition to austerity is being drawn around Farage (our very own Poujade - http://m.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/aug/28/guardianobituaries1), and around the poisonous nostalgia of the populist right. UKIP is clearly an "English" manifestation of the anti-political feeling expressed elsewhere is support for the Five Stars or Syriza.

The labour movement needs to find a way to articulate the anger and disillusionment which UKIP are channeling - which means that we need a clear and assertive statement of the progressive anti-austerity policies supported by the trade unions - in opposition to the neo-liberal policies of both this Government and its predecessor.

The polished moderation of "Progress" types in suits is the exact opposite of what we need from the Labour Party - but we may well be consigned to more of that if the trade unions continue to be as useless in influencing the Party as we are now.

UNISON's laughable approach of backing any UNISON member going for a Parliamentary selection, regardless of their politics, is simply one expression of the almost apolitical nature of the practical intervention in the Party by the big unions.

There's no point making headline-grabbing speeches to win votes at Party Conference if the unions aren't populating the Parliamentary Labour Party with people who will fight to put policies into effect.

With so many thousands having voted for the right-wing populism of UKIP, unions like UNISON also have to recognise that some of our members will have been among those voters.

If the labour movement cannot articulate the anger of our members with a progressive voice, criticising the political establishment from a working-class point of view, then we'll cede that role to the populist right.

We need to embark upon a self-confident programme of political education to build support for our policies, to politicise our trade unions and democratise our political work.

On several occasions since the General Election we have caught a glimpse of the potential political power of our labour movement (in March 2011, October 2012 and - above all - November 2011).

It is because we have repeatedly failed to capitalise on these opportunities or to sustain the momentum of our struggles, that we have allowed the political space to be created in which anger at austerity can be translated into votes for a return to an imagined 1950s.

The sense of identity to which UKIP speaks and from which it draws strength is reactionary, xenophobic and homophobic. It's "little Englandism" shades into racism and is socially conservative in every way. Yet it clearly appeals to many whose interests would be better served by the progressive policies of our movement.

The trade unions must become more vocal, more radical and more assertive if we are to draw people - including our own members - around a positive alternative to austerity.

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Vote Labour

There are no local elections tomorrow where I live or where I work, but in much of England a minority of the electorate will cast votes for local Councillors.



The option which ought to be open to us is to vote Labour. Working people need a political voice and that is what the Labour Party was created to be.



It's not much of that right now of course, and hasn't been for some time. The key problem is not so much the infestation of Blairite careerists from "Progress" - it's more the consistent inability of the trade unions to use our influence effectively.



My own trade union has a risible approach of backing anyone in a Parliamentary selection if they are members of our Union.



Given that UNISON members in Parliament delivered a bigger majority for Foundation Hospitals - against UNISON policy - than the Government could then command in the Commons as a whole, it is clear that the current approach of the big unions to the Labour Party is almost the exact opposite of that which you would adopt if you sought real influence and power.



Nevertheless, the trade unions could still one day seek to do real and useful political work on behalf of our members. Labour retains the potential to be a party of and for working people. Particularly if we shifted the leadership of our trade unions we might then have a Party worthy of support.



No credible electoral alternative exists or is in prospect for working people. As mind-bendingly impossible as it may seem that we should be able to turn the Labour Party into a vehicle for socialist politics, this prospect is less remote (by an order of magnitude) than the abiding fantasy that some other, better, Party can be built to the left.



Vote Labour.

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May Day solidarity with mid-Yorkshire

Today, May Day, is a day for solidarity.

UNISON members employed at the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust - where the Union is balloting all our members for strike action, need that solidarity today (http://m.morleyobserver.co.uk/news/local/unison-to-ballot-3-000-members-at-mid-yorkshire-hospitals-trust-1-5626886) as they prepare for a branch-wide ballot.

Adrian O'Malley, Unison Mid Yorkshire branch secretary, said: "As we expected the Trust is pushing forward with more downbandings and job losses in other departments. Clinical Nurse Specialists, Dental Nurses and more Admin staff are at risk of job and pay cuts. At the same time the Trust is employing more senior managers and has given over £4 million to private management consultants Ernst and Young.

"We have been forced into balloting our whole membership as the Trust is unwilling to discuss any alternatives to the downbandings (pay cuts)."

"The Trust is holding a gun to its staff's heads and saying take a pay cut or your sacked. We cannot allow this to continue. Industrial relations within the Trust have broken down due to the senior managements bullying."

Our members in mid-Yorkshire offer a refreshing alternative to the failed approach of swallowing attacks on pay and conditions to save jobs. As the North West Region pointed out to the National Joint Council Committee in local government, we've had both a pay freeze and massive job losses in local government over recent years. The health service faces similar medicine.

After the premature ending of the public service pensions dispute (following the biggest strike action for decades on 30 November 2011), last year - 2012 - saw the lowest level of official strike action since records began. In the twelve months to November 2012 only 250,000 working days were lost to strike action (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/january-2013/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Labour-disputes--not-seasonally-adjusted-).

(Which is to say, in the whole year that followed the strike action on 30 November 2011, the sum total of all the officially recorded strike action was perhaps a quarter of the action which took place on that single day.)

However, 2013 has seen a modest resurgence of action, including by the CWU and PCS.

The decision of UNISON health workers in mid-Yorkshire to ballot for branch-wide action is a timely inspiration to us all - particularly in UNISON.

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Time to stop retreating

I was interested to read some of the information chosen by the author to "contextualise" the employers' laughable 1% pay offer to local government workers (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) in UNISON's pay bulletin number 9 today.

There are two ways to interpret the inclusion of the following information in this particular bulletin at this particular time;

·                    "Half of councils have ended NJC mileage allowances and moved our members onto HMRC rates. For those who do significant mileage as part of their jobs, this means subsidising their employer on top of a three-year pay freeze and other cuts to conditions

·                    Around 30% of councils have cut unsocial hours payments and/or overtime pay – with a massive effect on low paid women workers in particular

·                    Over 25% of councils have cut pay at a local level and others have imposed unpaid annual leave."
 
I don't doubt these things are true, but many things are true - and not all truth could be squeezed into pay bulletin number 9.

One reading (which I prefer) of the motivation for including this particular information is that it reinforces the case for a decent pay rise (which 1% is not!) - this may encourage the reader to think in terms of rejecting 1% and fighting on for our claim for a substantial pay increase.

Another reading is that the selective presentation of this information, which tells a disappointing tale about our union organisation in these very many local authorities where we have failed to defend national conditions of service, could demoralise the reader and lead them towards accepting 1% (and therefore a 2% pay cut in real terms).

The conclusion which I draw is that, whatever the reason for this information having been presented to us in this way at this time, we need to face up to the fact that in many local authorities we have faced defeats and retreats on pay and conditions.

And we need also to conclude that now is a good time to stop this.

Every branch which loses (or fails to mount) a fight to defend conditions of service invites other employers to launch attacks on other branches. There is, of course, no shame in fighting and losing (though there is in failing to fight).

The greatest shame is that our national trade union has failed adequately to encourage and support the branches who have suffered the defeats now itemised in pay bulletin number 9.

Plainly we should reject 1% and try to build a national fight for decent pay (as our Scottish sisters and brothers have already resolved to do). Without a national fight for a decent national pay rise there is precious little point in having a national union.

However, we must also begin to fight nationally to enforce and improve national conditions. We should be fighting not just to hold on to the Green Book but to improve it.

Pay Bulletin number 9 also says that UNISON "will be issuing new bargaining advice shortly to branches and Regions on sick pay and car allowances as it seems clear that the employers will urge councils to cut them further at local level."

The Lambeth branch has successfully defended both sick pay and car allowances over the last year.

In the unlikely event that the national Union doesn't come to us to ask how we think we did this, I can always share information here.

It's not rocket science really though. We need to build rank and file organisation and to provide leadership which is unwilling to make concessions on conditions of service. We have to be prepared to threaten legal and industrial action at the drop of a hat, whilst also always being willing to find a pragmatic resolution if the employers are willing to talk rather than fight.

It's time to stop retreating.

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Labour Leaders opt for 1980s period drama?

The 1980s seem increasingly to weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living - like "Ashes to Ashes" for our political leaders.

Ed Miliband has decided to play Neil Kinnock with an attack on Len McCluskey (http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/24/ed-miliband-union-leader). Miliband has to cast McCluskey (somewhat implausibly) as a "Scargill" figure in order to appease the very Blairites (in the Shadow Cabinet and beyond) against whom McCluskey was warning him (http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/04/len-mccluskey-if-ed-miliband-seduced-blairites-hell-be-defeated) - one of whom has apparently claimed that our largest trade unions have been taken over by a new "Bennite tendency" (which will doubtless come as news to many at the UNISON Centre!)

In a sense neither McCluskey nor Miliband are addressing the other at all, each are actually addressing constituencies standing behind them (in one case the Blairites and in the other activists who saw a strong showing for the grassroots challenger in the recent General Secretary election).

Whereas Len McCluskey sees the need for radicalism and imagination to rejuvenate our movement, however, Ed Miliband appears worryingly close to the caricature of a prisoner of those sad people in and around "Progress" who will never stop fighting the inner Party battles of the 1980s.

McCluskey was right - and not at all "disloyal" - to be sharply critical of the Blairites whose vision of a Labour government is of continuity with the thirty-five year old neo-liberal consensus. It's not just that such policies are unlikely to win - even if they did they wouldn't fundamentally change the fact that we are under attack from the Government.

It's nonsense to characterise the leaders of the big trade unions as "Bennites" (and I should know, I am one)(a Bennite that is, not the leader of a big trade union!) - but we do need a much more assertive approach from the trade unions to the Party.

In particular, we don't need to see votes and energy from UNITE, UNISON, GMB or any unions being expended in support of candidates in Parliamentary (or other) selections unless those candidates can be relied upon to back policies in support of working people.

There is, unfortunately, no evidence of the sort of concerted and effective joint union work that could make a positive difference to the composition of the next Parliamentary Labour Party.

That's the real shame. It's not the 1980s and we need to move on.

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1%? No Thanks!

Today the national negotiators representing the employers of more than a million local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (the largest organised bargaining group in the UK economy) made a final pay offer of 1% with no strings, effective 1 April.

Perennial optimist, and lead negotiator for the GMB, Brian Strutton, says there'll be "relief" that this marks the end of the outright pay freeze (http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-consults-members-on-pay-offer). Even he has to concede though that there will be "disappointment that there is only 1% on the table."

Well.

Quite.

Prices are increasing at a rate of more than 3%, so a pay rise of 1% would concede a further 2% reduction in our standard of living to compound the 16% fall in our real wages/salaries since 2009.

Heather Wakefield, for UNISON, makes the point that "we held out for a better deal" (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=3043) - and that our National Joint Council (NJC) Committee can be expected to consider the offer against the backdrop of our falling living standards.

Our officials do need to wait for our elected lay Committees to make recommendations - but lay activists, speaking for ourselves, need not be so reticent.

The 1% offer - equivalent to the offer which has just been decisively rejected in a consultative ballot by Scottish local government workers - is barely even worth considering.

If we bend the knee, without a fight, and swallow a below-inflation pay rise after three years of pay freeze we will do our members and our union an injustice.

For our members (us!) - we cannot afford a continuing decline in our living standards in a country which (according to the Sunday Times "rich list") now boasts 88 billionaires. Our members are often now failing to make ends meet, and payday loans are increasingly a feature of everyday life. We may, of course, fight for more and fail - but we will only fail our members if we fail even to fight.

For our union - this is an existential crisis for national bargaining (and therefore in the longer term for national trade unions as we have known them for decades). If we cannot mobilise a national fight for a national pay rise that at least beats price inflation after a three year pay freeze then it doesn't matter how high we build our towers on the Euston Road - our relevance as a national organisation is called into question.

As the North West Region motion agreed earlier by the NJC Committee made clear, we are not charging ahead because we want a strike - but we have to recognise that we must respond with strike action to this continuous assault upon our real earnings and standard of living.

A 1% offer deserves 100% rejection.

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Back to the future in Kilburn

It really is like going back to the 80s! First Thatcher is all over the news and then along comes a wordy, insightful and - in large part - persuasive analysis co-authored by Stuart Hall (The Kilburn Manifesto - http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/manifesto.html)

Hall, and his fellow authors, argue that neo-liberalism has, over the 40 years since Pinochet's coup led to free market experimentation in Chile, established an (albeit incomplete and contested) global ideological hegemony, which means that the left is failing to turn the current economic crisis into a political challenge to the status quo.

They argue that; "This phase of free-market capitalism has now entered a serious economic crisis from which it cannot easily engineer an exit. But the shape of the crisis remains 'economic'."

This is evident, and provides a firm foundation for the following commentary on our Party; " Labour, the official opposition, is in serious diffculties. It leads in the polls but it is not yet winning hearts and minds. It shuttles between conficting ways forward. It seems afraid of its own (left) shadow, in hock to the old Blairite rump and a belief in the conservatism of the electorate, trapped in parliamentary rituals, mesmerised by electoral politics. It has been rendered speechless by the charge that it opened the door through which the Coalition is triumphantly marching."

There is much to applaud in the insights of the authors of this "Kilburn manifesto" including an accurate identification of our adversaries (the global ruling class) and an analysis of the articulation of class with other structures of oppression which could usefully inform current debates - and which leads to the plausible assertion that "Mobilising resistance requires alliances of a sort which only a multi-focused political strategy can hope to construct.".

If there's one thing I'm uncomfortable with (as I was in the 80s come to think of it) it's the weight given to what I was taught to call "the dominant ideology thesis."

Whilst it's clearly true that "every social settlement, in order to establish itself, is crucially founded on embedding as common sense a whole bundle of beliefs - ideas beyond question, assumptions so deep that the very fact that they are assumptions is only rarely brought to light", the authors are also right to concede that "there are legitimate differences of view about the causal emphasis that should be allotted to ideological, political and material factors." I tend to think it has been our material defeats which have paved the way for their ideological triumphs and that it is to the rebuilding of our movement that we need to pay the greatest attention.

That minor quibble aside, this is a refreshing contribution to the thinking the left needs to do and I look forward to the publication of further chapters.

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The choice before UNISON members

As I've mentioned before, I am seeking re-election to UNISON's National Executive Council, alongside a wide and diverse range of socialist comrades.
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With four exceptions (who have been elected unopposed) we candidates of the left face opponents who, in many cases, would seek to describe themselves as being on the left (or perhaps "the Centre-left"). And, in a sense, they are.

Most UNISON activists are on the left politically when you consider where the centre of political gravity has shifted to over the past generation.

None of the candidates in the NEC elections support austerity or the Coalition Government!

The choice before UNISON members is not a choice about Government policy - but a choice about trade union practice. The choice is about what we want and expect our trade union to do.

Our opponents are, generally, those who can be relied upon, when push comes to shove, to support the leadership of the Union more or less uncritically. The left of which I am a part, however, is a critical, questioning and challenging left, which is - I think - what UNISON needs.

In the two years since the last NEC elections, the most important event was, without doubt, the strike of 30 November 2011. This showed the strengths and weaknesses of UNISON more clearly than any other event in the twenty year existence of the Union.

Our strength was demonstrated in the three month period beginning some ten weeks before the strike, when the General Secretary announced the strike plan to the TUC. We saw the extent of mobilisation which was possible with determined leadership and unity. We also saw rapid growth.

From mid December 2011 however, we saw the grave weakness of UNISON, as we slowly abandoned that strength to strike a series of more or less unsatisfactory deals sector by sector. The dispiriting impact of this clumsy failure has impeded our attempts, up to now, to break the pay freeze.

The choice in these NEC elections is a choice between those who think that we did fine in the pensions dispute and are willing to put a gloss on the conduct of our leadership at the time, and those of us prepared to tell the awkward truth - that we should have fought harder and could have done better.

The more of the candidates of the genuine left who are elected to the UNISON NEC, the stronger will be the critical challenge in future, and the better our Union will perform to defend our interests.

If you are a UNISON activist, please do all you can to maximise the vote for the candidates standing to reclaim our union.

The perfect cure - opposing the far-right in the sun

I've shamefully neglected blogging over the past few days, having been laid up with some sort of bug.



I discovered yesterday that the best aid to recuperation is a trip out in the sunshine, with thousands of other local people, to confront a sorry gaggle of extreme right-wingers implausibly claiming the cross of St George as "their" symbol on the misnamed "March for England" (http://stopmfe.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/brightons-beautiful-anti-fascist-day/)



The dwindling number of self-proclaimed "nationalists" looked if anything uglier and more miserable in the sunshine than they had last year, while the good natured determination of the vast majority of anti-fascist demonstrators made the counter-demonstration a joyful event (thanks very much to the real "EDL" - the English Disco Lovers - http://www.edl.me/).



The anti-fascists looked like the England we live in, we were diverse, tolerant and cheerful in the face of adversity (in the form of perhaps over-zealous policing). The fascists appeared every bit as out of place as they were - their naked hatred can never be made attractive.



I hope they now give up and go away. If they don't, I hope we continue massively to outnumber them on our streets.



And I feel better!

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Defend Equality - Save Section 3

Today MPs may overturn a successful Lords amendment in order to repeal Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act at the final stage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.



Why does this matter?



Well Section 3 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/3/section/3) defined the duties of the then newly established Equality and Human Rights Commission as follows;



"The Commission shall exercise its functions under this Part with a view to encouraging and supporting the development of a society in which—



(a)people's ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination,



(b)there is respect for and protection of each individual's human rights,



(c)there is respect for the dignity and worth of each individual,



(d)each individual has an equal opportunity to participate in society, and



(e)there is mutual respect between groups based on understanding and valuing of diversity and on shared respect for equality and human rights."



The present Government think this duty too "wide-ranging" and "unrealistic" - but if the objectives of a body set up to promote equality and human rights aren't at least a little aspirational what's the point?



The position of the House of Lords was overwhelmingly supported in the responses to official consultation.



You can contact your MP via the website of PCS, the union which represents the Commission's workforce - http://action.pcs.org.uk/page/speakout/save-section-3



If Section 3 is repealed, can the public sector equality duty, codified in the 2010 Act long survive in its present form?

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UNISON National Executive Council (NEC) elections - it's that time again!

I've just updated the other page on this blog which has a list of all the candidates standing in the UNISON NEC elections on a platform to "reclaim our union."

UNISON resources cannot be used to support any candidate in the elections although Branches are permitted by the election procedures to notify their members of who they have nominated in the usual way in which they communicate with members (email/newsletter/mailshot etc).

As ballot papers are due out on Monday week (22 April) this coming week is the week in which to get information out. Anyone in London on Tuesday evening who can offer to help us distribute election materials in London please come along to the Cock Tavern 23 Phoenix Road NW1 from 6pm

Oh - and as I have said before - if you're a London UNISON member then please vote for me! (I'll blog a proper request for support later).

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An urgent appeal from UNISON to safety representatives (and all activists)

In March, UNISON was successful in influencing the House of Lords decision to remove clause 62 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill. This clause would have made it harder for an employee to claim compensation for injuries sustained at work.
 
However, the amendments by the House of Lords will now be considered by the House of Commons on 16 April 2013. The House of Commons could decide to ignore the House of Lords' recommendation and instead reinsert clause 62 and press on regardless.
 
To ensure that the House of Commons do not ignore the House of Lords' recommendations, write to your MP and tell them why you want them to vote to remove clause 62 from the ERR Bill.

http://www.writetothem.com/
 
To write to your MP, click on the above link, enter your post code, and select your MP. You can copy and paste text from UNISON's model email to help you to write your own email about why your MP should vote to remove clause 62 of the ERR Bill.

Here is the text of the model email;

I am writing to you in my capacity of a Safety Representative at my workplace .............
The House of Commons is due on the 16 October to consider the House of Lords decision to remove clause of 62 of Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which the government inserted into the Bill at the Commons Report stage on 16th October 2012. This clause had it become law would have amended Section 47 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and removed the ability of an employee to enforce a civil claim for workplace injury on the grounds of a breach of workplace regulations.
Contrary to what the government claims, clause 62 went far beyond what Professor Lofstedt recommended in his report "Reclaiming health and safety". No review has been undertaken. Also by amending section 47 of the Health and Safety at Work Act as clause 62 proposed, the change would apply all civil cases involving breaches of workplace regulations, not just those regulations where strict liability applies. This would mean that workers would have to rely on proving negligence on the part of the employer, and would lead to claims being settled for substantially less than their true value, because of course the insurers, representing employers, would be in a much better position to afford the cost of fighting and losing such a case. The government claimed this change would reduce costly litigious action. Nothing could be more far from the truth as employers and their insurers would be encouraged to mount spurious defences for breaches of regulations, where in the past they would have settled out of court.
Clause 62 was only introduced to the Commons at Report Stage after it had already gone through the Committee Stage. This means that this highly contentious and far reaching amendment to the Health and Safety at Work Act has not been subject to the scrutiny by the Commons that is normally associated with such changes. However it has been scrutinised by the Lords and found wanting.
I therefore ask that the Commons listens to the Lord and removes part 5: section 62: Parts 1-11 from the bill on the basis that the government should review and consult on the issue of strict liability in an open and transparent manner, inviting submissions from all affected parties."

Please act on this if you can.

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TUC General Secretary tells it like it is about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher

The first female General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress has some fine words about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher (http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/09/clearing-up-margaret-thatchers-mess);



"she assumed no responsibility to minimise social disruption or to create new jobs and industries"



"The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy"



"The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed"



"The financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the policies Thatcher championed. The dominance of finance in the economy and the failure of bank regulation flowed from her belief that markets should always be left to themselves"



It is good to see the General Secretary of the TUC refuses to be cowed into sycophancy by the rabid response to criticism of a divisive and reactionary Prime Minister.

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Glenda Jackson, MP speaks truth to power in Parliament about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher

http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-mps-pay-tribute-live

When I made my maiden speech a little over two decades ago, Margaret Thatcher had been elevated to the other place but Thatcherism was still wreaking, as it had wreaked for the previous decade, the most heinous, social, economic and spiritual damage upon this country, upon my constituency and my constituents.

Our local hospitals were running on empty. Patients were staying on trolleys and in corridors. I tremble to think what the death rate for pensioners would have been this winter if that version of Thatcherism had been fully up and running this year.

Our schools, parents, teachers, governors, even pupils, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising in order to be able to provide basic materials, such as paper and pencils. The plaster on our classroom walls was kept in place by pupils artwork and miles and miles of sellotape. Our school libraries were dominated by empty shelves, very few books, and those books that were there were being held together by ubiquitious sellotape and offcuts from teachers' wallpaper used to bind those volumes so that they could at least hang together.

But by far the most dramatic and heinous demonstration of Thatcherism was certainly not only in London, but across the whole country in metropolitan areas, where every single shop doorway, every single night, became the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom for the homeless. They grew in their thousands. And many of those homeless people had been thrown out onto the streets from the closure of the long-term mental hospitals. We were told it was going to be called Care in the Community. What in effect it was was no care at all in the community.

I was interested to hear about Baroness Thatcher's willingness to invite those who have nowhere to go for Christmas. It's a pity she did not start building more and more social houses after she entered into the right to buy, so perhaps there would have been fewer homeless people than there were. As a friend of mine said, during her era London became a city Hogarth would have recognise. And indeed he would.

But the basis to Thatcherism - and this is where I come to the spiritual part of what I regard as the desperate, desperately wrong track that Thatcherism took this country into - was that everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees. They were the way forward ...

What concerns me is that I'm beginning to see possibly the re-emergence of that total traducing of what I regard as being the basis of the spiritual nature of this country, where we do care about society, where we do believe in communities, where we do not leave people to walk by on the other side. That is not happening now. And if we go back to the heyday of that era I think we will see replicated again the extraordinary human damage that we as a nation have suffered from.

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Former UNISON President, Dave Anderson MP explains to Parliament how Thatcher is viewed in former mining communities

http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-mps-pay-tribute-live



Lady Thatcher came to power promising to bring harmony, he says. But, in the mining communities, she achieved the opposite.



The British coal industry was deemed uneconomic because it had high safety standards, he says.



After the pit closed in his community the burglary rate went up, he says. He says people discovered what it was like to be burgled by the child of a friend.



That is why mining communities feel so strongly about Thatcher, he says.



A lot has been said over the last 48 hours of the harsh nature of some of the responses to the news of Mrs Thatcher's death. This House needs to understand the reason for that, because before, during and ever since the attack on the coal industry, and the people in it, the government ignored the impact of that policy ... Mrs Thatcher's lack of empathy, her intransigence, her failure to see the other side, her refusal to even look at the other side has left [mining communities] bitter and resentful ... Her accusation that the enemy within was in the mining areas of this country still rankles with with people.

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Speaking ill of the dead

We should all be grateful to Glenn Greenwald for expressing in an admirably concise way why we should not be compelled to apply the rule that one does not speak ill of the dead in the cases of political leaders generally and Margaret Thatcher in particular (http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-etiquette).

Anyone with a spark of humanity who came of age under that brutal Government, which largely opened the continuing assault upon our class and our society hated that Government for what it was doing.

And we hated the Prime Minister who personified that Government.

And we still do.

Thatcher's death is an entirely legitimate cause for celebration for millions of decent people - but it is Thatcherism that we need to finish off.

We live in a country which is (on average) materially wealthier than it was thirty four years ago when Thatcher came to power, but it is in many ways poorer.

The raising up of greed as a socially acceptable motivation, the looting of commonly owned assets to enrich a tiny minority and the ruthless and continuing disempowerment of all possible centres of popular opposition have combined to create a nation into which I am almost ashamed to have brought children.

For Labour Party members we bear the additional shame of political responsibility for a Government which, in far too many ways, continued her poisonous legacy of privatisation at home and imperialism overseas, thereby paving the way for the return to power of Thatcher's true heirs.

I am with all those who are raising a glass this evening and trying to remember the lyrics to "Tramp the Dirt Down" - but particularly if tomorrow they will be waking up committed to the fight to bury Thatcherism alongside Thatcher.

As the establishment mourn their heroine we should remember, and draw inspiration from, all those who opposed her. The Greenham Common Women, the Miners and their supporters, the opponents of Section 28 and the much derided "loony left" in local government should all be rescued from what EP Thompson called "the enormous condescension of posterity" and rehabilitated as examples to those of us committed to carrying on their struggles.

I make no apology for smiling at the news of Thatcher's death. Now let's work to bury her legacy.

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The future of our unions is in our branches

What matters is what matters materially.



Within our trade unions, the allocation of our limited resources is always a vital question.



Over the decades of my union activity I have witnessed a centralisation of power and resources in our union.



At the same time there has been a decentralisation (indeed, a fragmentation) of bargaining and representation.



So, as we have empowered our national (and regional) officials so they have become increasingly irrelevant to our members.



To be brutally frank, there are increasingly strong grounds to question what it is, exactly, that our national trade unions are "for". National pay "bargaining" has delivered nothing of substance for several years. Whether it ever will is now an open question.



Equally, as our Regional structures have become less and less likely to facilitate industrial or legal action, so they have drifted away from mattering to our members.



At the same time, wherever locally our unions can bring together courage, competence and good fortune, we are still able to deliver for our members (or, rather, to enable them to use their trade unionism to deliver for themselves).



I draw two lessons from this state of affairs.



First, we need to raise our game nationally. Our priority in UNISON ought not to be our recruitment campaign but rather our pay campaign. UNISON can still be the Union we wanted when we made it twenty years ago. If we want to grow we must fight.



Secondly, we have to be serious about changing our Union to meet changing circumstances. We have to understand that the future of our Union is not in a prestigious HQ, nor in our Regional offices.



A twenty first century trade union will live or die in our branches - and that is where we need to focus our attention and resources.



Those who draw from this that there is a need to amend Motion 106 to UNISON National Delegate Conference win the prize for paying attention...

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Solidarity with the long weekend of action

Members of our sister union, PCS, are variously taking half day and one day strikes today and Monday following the civil service wide budget day strike (http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/pcs_comment/index.cfm/id/55F34F0B-1DA3-4C01-9F000054956E8DEF).



Given the intransigence and hostility of this Government, civil servants are clearly left with no option other than to resist by whatever means are available to defend their jobs, pay and pensions.



The same does not automatically apply on every issue for all of us. In some local authorities, for example, we continue to have a dialogue with our employers even through the deepest and most damaging cuts.



However, all we are achieving is, at best, modest damage limitation (and in a frighteningly large number of cases local authority employers have successfully attacked conditions of service as well as jobs).



The perpetrators of the attacks upon public service workers (and what's left of our Welfare State) can be found at numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. To confront these villains we need co-ordinated national action not just across one sector, but across the whole movement.

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Class - you've either got it or you haven't?

According to the BBC I am part of the established middle class (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058). I must tell the bank - maybe they'll increase my overdraft!

More to the point though, this "new" approach to a superficial definition of "class" doesn't actually assist our understanding of society. Class isn't a category, it's the expression of a social relation of (in a capitalist society) exploitation and struggle. (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Chapter%201%20--%20Wright%20Jan%202004.pdf)

An obsession with class as a category is an obvious manifestation of individualism as an ideology. It starts with the individual's question "what am I?" Class then becomes a badge worn by an individual and loses - as a concept - the explanatory power which it could (and does) have to help understand, and therefore be able to change, this hideously unjust society.

Essentially, those who sell our labour (or "labour power" to be precise) in order to live are workers. Those who live off the labour of others are bosses (capitalists to be precise). These two groups exist in an exploitative relationship, which is a class relationship.

There are, of course, those who are (at a particular point in time) in "contradictory class locations" between these two extremes, as well as those (such as the self-employed, small shopkeepers and students) who are permanently or temporarily outside this fundamental class relationship. Also, those of us who work in the public sector are workers employed by the state (on behalf of the capitalist class as a whole, rather than any individual capitalist).

However, the exploitative relationship between workers and bosses in a capitalist society is of fundamental importance in shaping both our society and the opportunities which exist to transform it.

A compelling vindication of this (Marxist) understanding of class is that, in every case where capitalist social relations have established themselves, workers have sought to form trade unions in order to express and defend our class interests as workers in a capitalist society (and these unions either do, or aspire to, organise all the BBC's "classes" except "the elite").

That's why the most important news about "class" in the last couple of days relates not to the BBC survey but to the TUC consideration of the "practicalities" of a General Strike (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22029895).

The politics of our Tory Coalition Government, which are the UK expression of a global ruling class offensive, are the politics of naked class war. This week, millionaires got a tax cut funded in part by benefit changes which threaten people with the loss of their homes if they have a spare bedroom.

If you "get" class then you "get" that this is a very real struggle in which we have to join. From the "established middle class" to the "precariat" workers need to be united against these attacks on our interests. This does require a labour movement led by people willing to show almost reckless courage.

Which reminds me that I need to blog about the UNISON NEC elections...

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In spring a UNISON activist's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of priorities for UNISON Conference

Tennyson claimed that "In spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174629).
This was clearly reactionary propoganda intended to distract us from the important business of prioritising motions for debate at UNISON's National Delegate Conference. 113 motions have thus far made it on to the Preliminary Agenda for our Conference in Liverpool in June (together with the eighteen Rule Amendments which will adorn our Thursday afternoon). 52 motions and three Rule Amendments fell at the first hurdle, having been ruled out of order by the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) (though one or two may come back after an appeal). Not all of these motions will get debated though. This will depend upon the prioritisation process which is now upon us. I have sought to explain the process here before (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.com/2008/03/prioritising-unison-conference.html?m=1) and won't repeat the explanation, both of the process and how (I believe) activists should engage with it, which I set out on that link. Though I will repeat the point that intelligent prioritisation is not so much about picking what are, on the face of it, the "most important issues" as about ensuring that other important issues don't slip off our agenda. So, here are some purely personal thoughts and suggestions about motions which I think are worthy of support in the prioritisation process. I will preface these suggestions with an observation about motions on branch funding. This is an important topic. Unless SOC depart from their past practice on such matters, they will automatically timetable the NEC motion 106, since it responds to a previous Conference instruction to the NEC. This motion will then (almost inevitably)be counterposed (by SOC, in a decision on "consequences") to motions 107, 108, 112 and 113 (bearing in mind the wording of the second and third paragraphs of motion 106), so that those other motions will only be debated if 106 falls. I think this means that the debate around branch funding will take place around Motion 106 and any amendments thereto which make it on to the Conference agenda - and that we can therefore put this to one side when considering Conference priorities. If other comrades think I've got that wrong I'd like to know, as it is vital that we restructure our trade union to cope with the fragmentation of public services which our current centralised structure has failed to prevent. This will be what happens to UNISON over the next decade and our national Centre will be a much smaller and more modest creature a decade from now. There are many motions which socialists might want to prioritise (Motion 47 for example is a thing of beauty and therefore a joy forever). However, we have to focus on a very few - and these are a dozen of my personal suggestions; Motion 42 Councillors Against the Cuts (as advertised on this blog) Motion 111 Election of Paid Officers (ditto) Motion 104 General Strike (because we need to continue the debate started at last year's TUC) Motion 64 Defending Trade Union Facility Time (because we have to) Motion 96 Opposing the Welfare Reform Act, Council Tax and Other Benefit Changes (an important addition to a vital debate) Motion 9 Democracy in Unison and the Right to Campaign in Ballots (a motion to rebut control freaks) Motion 86 Defending our Reproductive and Sexual Rights (does what it says on the tin) Motion 84 Defeating the English Defence League (ditto) Motion 93 Disabled People Against the Cuts (an important affirmation of support for a key campaigning group) Motion 36 National Action to Defend our Health Service (because we need it) Motion 38 Demise of the State Education System (because we need to fight it) Motion 78 Solidarity with South African Workers (because it's obvious) I'd be interested to know what other comrades think about this. As a rule, just as the left punches above its weight at Conference, we fail to punch our weight in the prioritisation process. (The sedge has withered at the lake, and no birds sing...)
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Don't do it Avril!

I'm upset at the news that leading Labour anti-cuts Councillor, Avril Poisson, is to defect to TUSC. I can't say any more now. Will post further later.
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Ok! Not the best of April Fools I know - but what can you do on a 1 April when the Government are dismantling the welfare state whilst rewarding millionaires and the priority of at least some in the Labour Party is to affirm their support from Trident nuclear submarines...?

Sussex University is a disgrace

Let me quickly qualify that.

The people who work at Sussex University are not a disgrace (a few senior managers excepted).

The students who study at Sussex University are not a disgrace.

In particular, the students who have staged a long running occupation against privatisation are not only not a disgrace, they are a fine example to us all.

It is, however, disgraceful that the overpaid bureaucrats who squat above the worthwhile endeavour of the students and staff teaching and studying in the Sussex countryside opposite the Amex Stadium have spent public money litigating to evict the occupiers (http://www.badgeronline.co.uk/2013/03/high-court-eviction/).

As a taxpayer and Brightonian I want to say that this abusive use of public money to silence legitimate dissent is not done in my name.

As a local lad I want to say that the senior managers of Sussex University who wasted our money on this reactionary frolic deserve forever to be unwelcome in our town. I suggest they go and live somewhere where their reactionary views will be accepted.

The Eighteenth Century suggests itself.

As a socialist and a trade unionist I want to say that the students who have carried out the occupation are an inspiration - and that every trade unionist who has supported them can be proud (whilst others should feel otherwise).

As a Labour Party member I want to record that local Labour Party members supported the occupation - and I want to demand that Labour's leadership pledges to reverse privatisation when we win the next General Election.

The plague of privatisation of our public services is striking us down throughout the public sector. The exemplary resistance of the Sussex students stands as a beacon of resistance for which we should all be grateful.

The senior management of Sussex University may be a disgrace - but some of their students are a great and positive example. I know that the Sussex occupation has already provided many labour movement activists with inspiration.

All true trade unionists will have been on the side of the occupiers. Others may have done otherwise.

So, maybe Sussex University is not a disgrace. Perhaps it is just that there are some disgraceful people in senior positions.

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Defend Cllr Kevin Bennett – no victimisation of councillors who oppose cuts

This post is reposted from Councillors Against the Cuts (http://councillorsagainstcuts.org/2013/03/27/defend-cllr-kevin-bennett-no-victimisation-of-councillors-who-oppose-cuts/).



"We have just heard that Cllr Kevin Bennett of Warrington Council and UNITE will face a proposal from the Labour whips of Warrington Labour Group that he is suspended from the Labour Group.



Unite the Union have pledged their full support for Kevin and they are promising a lobby at the Town Hall at the time of the hearing.



It would be good if as many opponents of the cuts in the area could join this lobby organised by Unite.



The hearing of the Warrington Labour Group will be on Thursday 4th April, at the Warrington Town Hall, Sankey Street, Warrington, Cheshire. The lobby will start at 6pm in advance of the hearing which is scheduled to start at 6:30pm.



It was right for 44 MPs to rebel last week against the whips on the issue of Workfare. It is right for councillors who oppose cuts. Messages  of support can be sent to councillorsagainstcuts@gmail.com and will be relayed to Kevin.



No victimisation of councillors who oppose cuts. Solidarity with Councillor Kevin Bennett."



I would only add that all trade unions - and particularly those of us organising in local government - should defend the Councillors prepared to vote against the cuts which we oppose.



UNISON members can of course do our bit by prioritising for debate Motion 42 to our National Delegate Conference.

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"Filled with horror" at local government cuts? Bring the debate about an alternative to UNISON Conference

Today's news report on local government spending cuts tells local government workers what we already know (http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/25/council-cuts-local-government-knees).



When Council Leaders go on the record to say that the budget cuts which they will be implementing "fill them with horror" you know that things are bad.



But you also have to ask the obvious question - "why are you doing it?" It wasn't the users (or the staff) of our Day Centres or Libraries who brought the global economy to its knees and forced us to bail out the banks.



Why should decent, social democratic local politicians who got involved to make a positive difference for local communities now find their role is to be the transmission belt whereby the Coalition Government can impose the burden of the financial crisis upon some of the most vulnerable?



I can't answer for those who are prepared to do things which "fill them with horror" but I would hazard a guess that what's missing, in the Labour Party and the wider movement is confidence that there is an alternative strategy for a progressive local authority other than to deliver savings to meet cuts in central government funding (whilst trying to minimise the damage).



This is why the challenge posed by "Councillors Against the Cuts" (http://councillorsagainstcuts.org/) is so important. By putting forward an alternative, Councillors Against Cuts open up space for the debate which needs to take place about Labour's strategy for local government in the remainder of this Parliament (and beyond).



This, in turn, is why UNISON activists should campaign to prioritise Motion 42 (Councillors Against Cuts) for debate at UNISON National Delegate Conference. The Conference doesn't take place until June - but Regions are being consulted on their priorities by the Standing Orders Committee now (and should in turn be consulting branches).

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A modest but significant victory for workers

The decision of the Employment Tribunal in the case of UNISON v Capita (http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=3015) is very welcome - particularly to your blogger, who was a witness for UNISON in the case.

The tribunal judge upheld our complaint that the employer had failed to provide information about agency workers as required by law in a collective redundancy situation. He went on to make a "protective award" of 45 days pay in respect of the 30 workers who ended up being made redundant when Capita moved Lambeth Council's caller centre to Southampton.

The eventual value of this award isn't as important as the clarity of the decision itself. Of course it may be appealed (as I understand the earlier decision against Barnet Council may have been) but it is a robust and well argued decision, so I'll go out on a limb and say I expect it to stand - particularly in relation to its finding on liability.

Employment Judge Baron notes that employers may not like subsections (g), (h) and (i) of subsection 4 of section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which were introduced, with effect from October 2011, by the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 - but they are the law (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/93/schedule/2/paragraph/4/made).

In any collective redundancy situation (and also, as a result of a similar amendment to TUPE) in any transfer situation, the employer must disclose to the trade union details of all their agency workers. Critically, Employment Judge Baron observes that - whereas at the time Capita made the mistake in this case the legislation was fairly new - now "there can be no excuse" for employers who fail to maintain a central list of agency workers so as to be able to meet their legal duties in the event of a future collective redundancy consultation.

All activists can draw this tribunal decision to the attention of employers in order to put them on notice of the requirement to provide agency worker information in the event of a collective redundancy or transfer consultation (of course you can also try to get them to share the information regularly and routinely in any case!)

If the employers subsequently fail to comply with the law in this regard, the fact that the union has put them on notice of their obligation should help to persuade a tribunal to award closer to the maximum "protective award" of 90 days' pay.

This too can be pointed out to employers to force from them information about their use of agency workers (which we can then use to try to avert redundancies, both directly - by substituting redundant employees for agency workers - and, more importantly, indirectly, by putting pressure on employers to limit their use of agency staff).

Trade unionists ought not, of course, to be opposed to agency workers (and we are not) - but we are opposed to the deliberate segmentation of the labour market by employers seeking to "divide and rule" between a "flexible" periphery of insecure workers and a (slightly!) more secure "core" workforce. In essence, we should - and do - campaign for all workers to have the rights of employees.

However, at a time of job losses we rightly seek to minimise the use of agency workers where this will, in general or in particular, reduce the risk of redundancies. This tribunal decision is a small but important asset to us in that endeavour.

Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will understand that I am cheerful about this tribunal decision as I have been banging on about the subject for some time (http://jonrogers1963.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/section-188-and-agency-workers.html?m=1).

If any trade unionist would like a copy of the tribunal decision, let me know.

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