I notice that, from the safety of anonymity, one of the bloggers over at UNISON Active has made a desperate attempt to link leading left candidate for UNISON General Secretary, Paul Holmes, to the foolish disruption of negotiations between BA and UNITE at ACAS yesterday.
I won't detain you on that topic dear reader. The internet is full of criticism (some justified and some excessive) of those responsible for the disruption (and a sort of defence of the action from the SWP).
For what it's worth I don't think there is any political point in invading the ACAS office (a workplace for a lot of PCS members trying to do a decent job of keeping conciliation work in the public sector and stopping solicitors raking in money for the old rope of signing off compromise agreements).
What strikes me though is how eager the Prentis camp are to try to associate Paul with this episode. This reflects the disappointing red-scare tactics of Dave's election address.
The fact that members of the Socialist Workers Party support Paul no more associates Paul with the SWP than the fact that leading members of the Communist Party of Britain play a key role in supporting Dave Prentis means that Dave is a secret fan of the Red Army Choir. Paul is no more "beholden" to the SWP than Dave is to the CPB. In fact I have more often heard Paul Holmes be open about his membership of the Labour Party than I have our current General Secretary.
If supporters of Dave Prentis were truly confident of their own politics or their candidate they would be inviting all comers to online hustings and debating the policies, not seeking to smear their opponents. How sad.
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