Leading with the left
Leading with the left
I came as close as I ever want to come to dropping a bacon sandwich while I was leafing through the contents of a recent mailshot from UNISON HQ.
There among the usual offers of cheap loans, trips to Disneyland and circulars on the dirty deeds of the hard left was the most extraordinary invite I've ever received. Would I like to put my name forward to attend a royal garden party in the presence of the Queen Mother to celebrate the NHS's 50th birthday? This was no wind up -- this was an official UNISON circular.
As a republican who believes that UNISON should be campaigning under the slogan "Axe the Civil List -- Cut the Waiting List" I thought that maybe I should go along just to have a quick chat with the dear old Queen Mum on her excessive use of taxpayer's money to finance her private healthcare. This woman must be the world's most highly subsidised bed blocker. I say it's about time she learnt to stand on her own two feet rather than relying on state handouts.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for details of the labour movement's official national event to celebrate fifty years of the NHS.
So guess who decided to put in her first appearance at 3:29 on the afternoon of Chelsea's victory against Middlesborough in the Coca-Cola Cup Final? Kathleen Georgia Martin -- all six pounds and nine ounces of her. Helen went into labour on the Saturday afternoon just at the point when I was in full rant mode on the platform at the Reclaim Our Rights conference. It was lucky I didn't take up the offer of going for a pint with Jimmy Nolan and the Liverpool dockers.
Kathleen was safely delivered nearly two weeks early by the local UNISON branch chair, Nora Pearce, to the sounds of the Radio Five Live commentary from Wembley. The unused ticket is now framed up alongside the first picture of her.
Now that Tony Blair is acting as a kind of self-styled sales rep for arch union buster Rupert Murdoch, you'd think that the TUC would have spotted that the writing is on the wall over the new laws on recognition. Apparently not. The word on the streets is that Monks is still looking for some kind of shabby compromise that would involve both a voting threshold and exemption for "smaller employers".
This is an issue where the left can almost certainly hold the line within our own unions. Combined with the prospect of a minimum wage set at around £3.50 an hour, the possibility of mobilising serious rank and file union resistance this summer looks very real. I'm optimistic that the Reclaim Our Rights conference could be the springboard for just such a mobilisation. We must not let sectarian self-interest blow the prospects apart.
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