UNISON moving forward after a difficult and damaging afternoon

After a positive start to UNISON National Delegate Conference yesterday morning, I'm not sorry that my health precluded my hanging around to watching person the bear garden that was Tuesday afternoon.

I have, however, had the benefit of detailed reports of the contributions made in debate on the ill informed motions 10 and 11, which attacked our left-wing NEC. The movers were fortunate that their motions had made it past the standing orders committee (SOC), though perhaps they were entitled to expect such good fortune from an SOC which is now more openly partisan against the left than at any time in my membership of UNISON.

Whereas the directly elected NEC has shifted to the left, reflecting the anger and disillusionment of our most active members at the failure of our trade union effectively to resist austerity, the indirectly elected SOC has not experienced any such change. Motions of questionable propriety attacking the NEC have therefore found an easy passage onto the conference agenda, whilst an entirely reasonable proposal from the NEC to invite the conference to consider the need for a review of their arrangements for legal representation was ruled out of order by SOC, on the bizarre grounds that the NEC should carry out this review itself without asking Conference.

Therefore according to our SOC Rule K precludes Conference instructing or even debating how the NEC should use its power in relation to legal assistance, but a motion which attacks the NEC for trying to exercise its power to seek legal advice independently of the UNISON machine is absolutely in order. 

UNISON’s NEC obviously cannot criticise our SOC, but a retired member with a Blog can observe that SOC are absolutely failing in their duty under Rule P.2.3 and are allowing themselves, quite transparently, to be a tool of reactionary elements in the UNISON machine who are fighting a ferocious rearguard action to try to reverse the results of last year's NEC elections.

With the slight advantage over our elected NEC of having 1000 paid staff at their disposal, those who are offended that our members have elected a leadership that does not want to get in their way when they want to fight clearly did a good job of organising in the run-up to conference.

First they told and repeated the lie that decisions taken by NEC in October of last year somehow breached or amended our rules. A lie can, of course, get halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on, and, in this case, the lie had carried the day very swiftly in many branches and a number of Regional Councils. 

Obviously this was always nonsense. If the General Secretary had for one moment thought that the NEC had taken an action which was genuinely ultra vires she would've acted in ways which she obviously did not. That was never the point. This issue was seized upon by supporters of UNISON's Ancien Regime as a stick with which to beat a new, and relatively inexperienced, NEC at its first annual Conference.

The bludgeons to be used were speeches written, in large part, by paid officials and handed out to delegates, some of whom genuinely believed they were righting a wrong but many of whom knew full well the dishonesty of their actions. Vicious redbaiting reminiscent of the worst of past UNISON witchhunts was accompanied by a toxic undercurrent of personal attacks on the President in particular.

In order to understand the particular venom directed at Paul Holmes from the right wing within UNISON it is necessary to understand a little history. Only the most naive would believe for a moment that these attacks are motivated by any genuine concern for alleged “victims" in Kirklees, whose testimony has been sought out and organised by a hostile employer.

In the old days in UNISON a troublesome left-wing activist could expect to find themselves caught in a pincer movement between UNISON disciplinary action and an attack from their employer. The case of Yunus Bakhsh springs to mind for example.  The former leadership of our trade union thought nothing of the appearance of collusion with a hostile employer as long as the individual being dismissed, and eliminated from UNISON, was one of their left-wing critics.

The fact that the new NEC used a power which has been held by every UNISON NEC since the 1st of July 1993 to allow Paul Holmes to retain his UNISON positions, to which he had been elected by UNISON members, in spite of his unfair dismissal by Kirklees Council, has outraged the old right wing in UNISON. They presumably see it as "cheating" thereby to frustrate their time honoured tactic of getting their opponents sacked by the bosses in order to get them out of their way in UNISON.

This alone is quite enough to explain the ratcheting up of the campaign of character assassination and personal vilification against Paul which has been a feature of UNISON for at least the past decade.

Speakers against Motions 10 and 11 generally adopted a reasoned and restrained approach, relying upon persuasion and expressed in a comradely fashion. This simply could not compete with the venom of a prearranged assault upon the NEC organised by those for whom it is more important that they should win an internal battle at the cost of great damage to UNISON than that UNISON should be able to focus its energy and attention on the issues of concern to our members.

As well as preparing to field candidates in every single constituency in the next NEC elections, comrades on the left will also need to pay attention to organising ahead of Regional Councils and forthcoming Conferences in order to avoid such ambushes in future. The right wing and elements within the the machine are at war with us, and we must respond in an organised, effective and robust fashion.

UNISON members who wonder what it means that National Delegate Conference has passed Motions 10 and 11 should know that there is an established process for the NEC to consider and act upon decisions of National Delegate Conference. Having served seven terms on the NEC I am very familiar with this process.

A report should be presented to the next full NEC meeting after Conference listing all Conference decisions and making preliminary recommendations as to which NEC Committee each decision should be referred to.

The relevant committees should then consider the decisions at their next meeting and make recommendations for action back to the NEC.

This has been the approach for many years. Indeed it was explained to me five years before I was ever elected to the NEC by our illustrious former president, Rita Donaghy, after Conference instructed the NEC immediately to cancel the contract signed with Capita for the pilot project of what became UNISON Direct in 1998.

No doubt the NEC will adopt this approach to the decisions taken by conference in passing motions 10 and 11, alongside all the other decisions which conference will hopefully take during the week relating to the cost of living crisis and the other major issues confronting our members in their workplaces and communities.

Leading members of our NEC cannot and will not climb into the gutter from which they are being attacked. However, supporters of the left-wing within the rank and file of UNISON, or even a retired member with a Blog, need not be so fastidious. 

Right-wing members of the NEC who supported attempted disruption of our Conference yesterday morning, and those who led the charge against the NEC yesterday afternoon although they knew it was based on lies, should remember that people who live in glasshouses ought not to throw stones.