I nearly forgot to report on a moment of what could have been light relief at the end of Wednesday’s meeting of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC). Yorkshire and Humberside NEC members, John McDermott queried the minutes of the October meeting, as the section dealing with the report back from the TUC did not record the discussion which had taken place about the running of the delegation and the decision of the Presidential Team to send three delegates home because they walked out when Tony Blair got up to speak.
I stayed in the hall suffering Blair’s awful speech and blogging. I remembered that discussion at the October NEC – and reported it here on this blog.
However, the President stated that no such discussion had taken place and that the minutes were accurate. John (rightly in my opinion) moved to challenge the accuracy of the minutes (which did not and do not accurately record the relevant discussion at the October meeting – but when this was put to the vote only a handful of NEC members voted against the President and in favour of the accuracy of the minutes.
It would be over the top to compare this episode with the falsification of history – but I think it illustrates quite well just how uncomfortable most of my NEC colleagues are with critical contributions (indeed with critical thought). This does not make our union stronger.
I wonder whether the minutes of the December meeting will record the detail of this discussion when we consider them in February…
Perhaps the union's minutes are a bit like your reports in that they are not a verbatim record and irrelevant points are left out.
ReplyDeleteExcept of course you remembered belatedly that you have a gallery to play to.
Fully understand mate and appreciate your moral stance - I thought it was a statement of fact rather than personal attack but each to their own eh?
ReplyDelete