UNISON London Region invitation to John McDonnell

The UNISON Greater London Regional Committee met yesterday and, as is customary, spent three hours struggling to get half way through our agenda! Important decisions included the decision to move the date of the next meeting of the Regional Council (due for 1 November) in order to encourage attendance on that day at the rally and lobby of Parliament being organised under the banner of NHS Together. This was a very sensible decision which I argued for as a member of the National Executive.

It does mean that we will have a problem getting a quorum of delegates to a meeting for which we have had to change the date. We were advised that the quorum at the time of the last meeting had been 99 and we had fallen just two delegates short. The quorum fluctuates as delegates are elected or resign, but we will need more than 100 people present if we are to transact business.

I think the Regional Committee made a good decision which should help with the quorum by deciding to invite UNISON member John McDonnell to speak about privatisation. John has been in the news a bit because of his leadership bid, but the reason for the invitation is his exemplary work in opposition to privatisation of public services. The Committee was advised that it might not be appropriate to invite John to a meeting on a number of grounds, but decided to invite him anyway.