Trade Union Bully Boy

 

Once again, here is an extract from my memoirs (which you can purchase at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history). 

This explains how I came to be described in the national press as a “Trade Union Bully Boy”;

“Contrary to the opinions of many who have reflected upon my actions, I was not particularly inebriated after the pensions strike. I had, after all, been looking after my son all day as well as organising the strike in Lambeth. By the time I got home to Brighton I was tired and went to bed quite early.

However, I woke up in the small hours and couldn’t get back to sleep. Unwisely (as it turned out) I thought I would send out an email to members of the Union in Lambeth thanking them for having taken strike action in such an impressive way. I was still on a high from the best strike day I had ever been part of.

As I drafted the email, my mind was taken back to several conversations which I had had with some of our best activists, both on the picket lines and the subsequent demonstration. “What”, they wanted to know, “could we do about the members who had not taken strike action?” These were a relatively small number, but their disloyalty greatly angered some of their colleagues - in particular when some of those who broke the strike were individuals who had been particularly demanding or critical of the trade union in the past.

The sort of person who will break a strike is, of course, very often the sort of worker who is not at all diligent, who gets into trouble at work and then blames everyone else for circumstances which they have likely brought upon themselves. I had tremendous sympathy for the anger felt by a good shop steward who saw someone they had done a lot to help waltz across a picket line. I knew however that there was no way in which UNISON could lawfully take any action against members who had broken the strike.

Therefore, knowing that my email would go to all members, I included some choice remarks addressed to those who had not supported the strike. I sent the email and went back to sleep.

The next morning, when I got to the office, I asked a couple of colleagues what they thought of the email. They said they thought it was ok - but then the phone rang.

An Assistant General Secretary of UNISON was on the other end of the phone. “What the f… have you done Rogers?”, she asked.

It transpired that one of our scabs had forwarded my email to Sky News, who had reported on it, with the Sun and the Daily Mail also picking up the story of the “trade union bully boy” who had threatened union members who had broken the strike.

Within a couple of hours I had, on “firm advice” from UNISON HQ, withdrawn my email in a follow up email to all members (as one of our Convenors remarked, this meant that everyone got to see what I had said all over again). Although I didn’t - and don’t - think that there was anything wrong with what I said, I did not want to cut across the work which UNISON was doing to get the best possible media coverage for our action at a time when it seemed possible that we would be taking further strike action in the near future.”