Leaving Lambeth

Today, Thursday 2 January 2020, has been the first working day since September 1986 when I have not had a job. After 33 years of local government service, my last day working for the London Borough of Lambeth was 31 December 2019.

Thanks to years of trade union struggle, and to the Local Government Pension Scheme which is the product of that struggle, my redundancy is not at all the personal disaster which job losses have been for so many, and I am looking forward to the next chapter of my participation in class struggle (including as a retired member of UNISON – unless and until I get another job and return to full membership).

As regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will probably remember, I have spent most of my working life as a UNISON (and before that NALGO) representative in Lambeth (with occasional forays into the life of the trade union at national and Regional level). Three years ago I shared here my valedictory address to my trade union branch, looking back at the eventful quarter century or more in which I had held leading roles in the union locally.  

Now, as I leave Lambeth, I am pleased to reflect that, whilst someone joining the Council this month will join a Council in which there are many fewer staff, proportionately fewer trade unionists and less class consciousness than when I arrived from Lewisham in January 1987, they will have the same 35 hour week, the same mid-month pay date, the same annual leave entitlement and the same maternity leave entitlement as someone starting 33 years before. Their employment rights will continue to be protected by procedures negotiated and agreed with their trade unions.

I am equally pleased to know that a new starter in Lambeth will be joining an organisation in which, just as was true a third of a century ago, there are rank and file anti-racists in the workforce who will always try to press the Council, its leadership and senior management, to live up to professions of commitment to equality and opposition to discrimination in general and institutional racism in particular.

Lambeth has been a wonderful place to work because of its workforce, upon the militancy of a minority of whom I relied for many years in order to be a moderately effective local union representative. I have learned a great deal from employees of Lambeth Council over a great number of years, and I shall continue to apply these lessons into the future.

I was particularly honoured to be, for many years, one of Lambeth’s radical voices in the wider labour movement – and I always remembered that socialists could only speak truth to power with authority on the basis of strong rank and file organisation and an effective relationship with the local employer.

It was the support of the rank and file, and the consequent respect of the employer, that kept me in employment when, having been denounced by the Tory press, I was told, in 2011, by the General Secretary of my trade union that there was nothing that union officialdom could do to protect my job. I was protected instead by the strength of militant grassroots trade unionism, which had forged our relationship of mutual respect with our employer.

I have now left Lambeth Council, just as I left my various positions in UNISON in 2017, at a time (or, at least, a reorganisation and consequent redundancy situation) of my own choosing. It’s good to know when the time has come to move on. (I would add that, as a retired member of UNISON, I look forward to voting in the forthcoming election for General Secretary in accordance with Rule E.3.3).

I enjoyed the opportunity which my colleagues in Lambeth gave me to represent UNISON members on our Regional Committee and National Executive Council over many years (so that I could take on the fight for democracy in our trade union), but what mattered most, and what I will miss most, is having been part of the workforce of Lambeth Council.

There is no better place of work, and no better collection of colleagues and comrades amongst whom to have spent a working life. It's been an absolute honour.