1999 - marches and banners

 

Here's another extract from my memoirs, which you can purchase (perhaps as a Mother's Day present) for a nominal price at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.

The spring of 1999 saw me carrying equally heavy banners on equally tiring marches at different ends of the country;

The New Labour Government introduced the National Minimum Wage with effect from 1 April 1999, which represented a victory for UNISON - and for Rodney Bickerstaffe in particular who had been fighting for a statutory minimum wage when most of the TUC stood in opposition to such an infringement on “free collective bargaining”. 

However the level of the minimum wage at its introduction (and the existence of lower rates for young workers) were unsatisfactory, which is why UNISON National Delegate Conference 1998 had agreed to call for a national demonstration in support of UNISON policy for a higher, unified rate.

The NEC organised the demonstration for Newcastle in April, which was not - perhaps - calculated to achieve maximum turnout, but nevertheless 20,000 people turned up. The CFDU were a visible presence with our own new national banner (which some officials proposed should be taken down, a request that was politely declined). For my part, I was carrying the (rather heavier) Lambeth UNISON branch banner - across the bridge over Tyne on a fairly windy day. I never did that again.

A meeting organised jointly between the CFDU and the SWP at the conclusion of the demonstration was another indication of the coming agreement between the divided tribes of the organised left - but I can honestly say I remember nothing of that meeting as I was recovering from carrying that heavy banner over that bridge in that bloody wind!

A week after the national minimum wage demonstration in Newcastle, the fascist terrorist David Copeland planted a nail bomb in Brixton market - and Lambeth UNISON became a central part of organising a community response to this attack upon our borough. 

In a fortnight we organised a demonstration from Brixton to join the May Day rally in Trafalgar Square, an event which occurred on the day after the third (and last) nail bombing (at the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho) and the day before the Police arrested the bomber.

It’s a long walk from Brixton to Trafalgar Square, and longer still if you are trying to steward a demonstration but it was one of the iconic moments in the history of Lambeth UNISON - remembered in the marvellous banner which Ed Hall made for us and which led the demonstration.

Ed had taken early retirement some time after I returned as Branch Secretary in 1996 and had taken up making banners for labour movement and campaigning organisations. To this day if you go to a national demonstration with a lot of trade union banners you will see many examples of Ed’s handiwork, but for me the Brixton bombing demonstration banner has always been his very best work.

That was also the banner which got Ed noticed as the great artist of our movement which he  undoubtably is, leading to - among other things - an exhibition of his banners at the People’s History Museum some years later.