UNISON Conference and motions 10 and 11

Yesterday, the first day of UNISON's annual Local Government Conference at the Brighton Centre was greeted, in appropriate local style, by the annual naked bike ride.

This helps to demonstrate that Brighton is more fun every week than any conference any week.

Some delegates, gathering for the full national delegate conference, which starts tomorrow (Tuesday) morning won’t have noticed the naked bike ride of course.

In particular, supporters of motions 10 and 11, which are due to be debated on Tuesday morning, and which are critical of, and seek (albeit ineffectively) to overturn decisions made by the new left-led NEC last October, wouldn’t have noticed that the bike riders were naked, even had they seen them.

This is because they know that, prior to the results of the 2021 UNISON NEC elections, everything in UNISON was already for the best, in the best of all possible trade unions. Members were joyful at the rate of strike pay (then £25 a day) and were regularly holding street parties to celebrate their satisfaction with the arrangements UNISON had in place for providing legal advice to our members.

Best of all, UNISON members could celebrate a reduction in real pay of 20% over the preceding 20 years, under the leadership of successive NECs on which the left had been a marginalised minority.

Supporters of motions 10 and 11 at this year's UNISON National Delegate Conference could, at that time, see that our former NEC, far from being naked and denuded of imagination and hope for our members, were clothed in the most beautiful garments, befitting the most fabulous leadership of any trade union in the history of the world.

That is why they are so sharply critical of the new left-led NEC who, to their eyes, are clad in drab, every day garb and are simply doing foolish things like increasing strike pay, and agreeing to review our arrangements for legal advice for our members.

Had any of the most vigorous supporters of motions 10 and 11 been able to tear themselves away from Twitter or Facebook for long enough to notice yesterday's bike ride, they would not therefore have seen the flabby bits and dangly bits of passing cyclists. On the contrary, they would have been astonished at the fine silks, bejewelled headdresses and generally fabulous attire as the bike ride went past.

Perhaps then, it is as well that these UNISON members were spared seeing the naked bike ride, so that they could continue to comfort themselves with their memories of the perfection that was UNISON before June 2021, and therefore continue to plot how they would try (and fail) to bring down UNISON’s elected NEC and try (and fail) to prevent it giving greater control of our trade union to our members.

Those of us who know that UNISON stood in need of the very real change which the new NEC is trying to embark upon, will not be likely to fall for the nonsense of motions 10 and 11. 

The UNISON bureaucracy may well still control large parts of the lay structure of our trade union and can continue to work with the remnants of UNISON's “Ancien Regime” to block, obstruct and obfuscate as the NEC tries to make necessary change, but activists need to stand firm and press ahead with a positive and progressive agenda reflecting the interests of UNISON members, rather than pander to the anguish and angst of those who feel that their entitlement to be in charge has been trampled on.