Blogging interrupted

Conference is a busy time and I haven't been able to keep this blog up to date whilst running around at Conference. Regular readers, Sid and Doris Delegate have probably been too busy to read this anyway.

I will post shortly about the very important speech from our General Secretary, which sounded the death knell for the effective autonomy of UNISON Labour Link and fired a symbolic but important warning shot at the Labour Party, formally adopting the policy advocated for some years by the United Left and using the phrase coined by Glenn Kelly - that our members are fed up of "feeding the hand that bites us". I understand that not all members of the Labour Link Committee are happy with Dave's speech, but if Labour Link had not been consistently inadequate over such a long period we might not have reached this crossroads.

I will also post further soon about the Rules debate, in which Conference sensibly rejected an attempt to devolve bargaining responsibility from Service Groups to Sector Committees without sufficient assurance of democratic accountability, and failed to agree a Rule Amendment which, in seeking to ease the expulsion of members of far right parties was too vaguely worded.

UNISON has a list of BNP members within the Union and should now share this with our branches so that branches can investigate whether there have been any breaches of our current Rules (under which we can and have disciplined far right activists). It is a shame that some of those who supported the unsuccesful Rule amendment are suggesting that our current Rules cannot be used in this way and I hope that when the disappointment at failing to win a card vote lifts a more constructive approach will then be taken.