REMEMBERING OUR ROOTS
Just
a week to go go before flying out to my first ever LP conference, and
I'm keeping one eye on the Spanish airport workers dispute, who last
time I checked were planning to take industrial action on the very
day of my flight. All a bit anxiety provoking because I'm the one who
will be holding the house keys for the delegates and visitors.
Apparently this conference will be the biggest ever, and with more
opportunity for delegates to speak.
It's
been a long time since I went to a delegate conference, and it has
got me remisniscing about the times I went every year to my Trade
Union conference. I came to the Labour Party through trade union
activism. I'm intrigued to see how this new experience for me will
compare with the NUPE conferences I attended, in terms of how it is
organised, who will be there, but also how much the zetgeist has
changed.
I
joined NUPE on my first day at work. For those LI members not as old
as me, NUPE was the unmerged forerunner of Unison, headed up by the
venerable Rodney Bickerstaffe. It was in the main a manual workers
union and I was a qualified social worker, but the alternative would
have been Nalgo, which consisted of directors of services – my
bosses – as well as frontline workers. This didn't make sense to
me. So about a hundred social workers like myself joined NUPE
instead. It was in the middle of the winter of discontent -1978-9,
and the mood was combative, so straight away I was in the thick of
it. I'd just come from university where a group of us had organised a
boycott of all lectures. We set up a number of alternative seminars,
and an essay bank. We had a 97% support, and the following year
the course institutionalised the experience by handing the course
over to the students for a fortnight. A lot of us cut our teeth on
that experience, and went on to be active in the labour movement.
Over
the next few years I found myself on all-out strike on three
occasions, and it was always about cuts to services. Some things
never change. And many times we took selective action, for example by
refusing to talk to consultants who were brought in to “restructure”
- a euphemism for cuts, or by working to rule. A highlight for me was
when the residents of the childrens home I worked in said that they
wanted to join in so that we could remove emergency cover. So we took
them all down to the Social Services Directorate in a van and sat
there whilst the managers arranged cover, in the meantime providing
burgers for the young people whilst they sorted it out. After the
strike was over, the young people entertained us with stories of the
scab management cover – they gave them the run around - the bribery
to behave, new haircuts and trainers for everyone. The young people
were managing their own bargaining chips. And there was the time
when a manager got down on his hands and knees in order to crawl
through the legs of the pickets in order to go to work. Or when
Edwina Currie, the head of the LA Social Services Committee and the
woman at the middle of the egg-gate scandal – issued a memo asking
for all homesexual workers to be declared and counted (!), and we
contemplated replying that all of us were, before deciding to ignore
it.
Our
branch decided that you could never be a delegate to NUPE conference
twice, so that as many people as possible could have the opportunity.
This meant that the delegates were always inexperienced, and we
compensated for that by have a large contingent of ex-delegates who
came as visitors, whose job was to support and advise them –
helping them write speeches; advising on procedural matters, voting –
mandated or otherwise, and generally being encouraging and helpful.
These were the days before mobile phones that weren't expensive
bricks, so we hung over the balcony and waved wildly, used sign
language, and messages written on placards. They in turn signalled to
us to meet outside if they didn't know what to do. Although the
delegates had been mandated, this was always fluid, what with the
daily compositing committee changing the motions, or the standing
orders committee playing silly games with the order of business, and
of course the emergency resolutions.
I'll
never forget my first conference speech to propose a motion. I had
five minutes to get my point across – for those who know me (indeed
reading this!) they will know how stressful that was for me! I wrote
out my speech carefully underlining words – red to accentuate to
make sure I didn't deliver it in a monotone, green to remind me to
breathe. I practised in front of a mirror and timed myself. The
dreaded day came, and I waited nervously to be called. I brushed away
delegates from other branches who asked that I include this point or
that in my speech . Nope sorry – my speech is five minutes long, no
room, can't change it now etc. I got up, moved the mike to my mouth
and rattled it off, getting only one warning tinkle to finish up. The
room wobbled in front of my eyes, and appeared to be in negative. I
stumbled off the platform and towards the nearest seat and put my
head between my legs so I wouldn't black out. The motion was passed,
and I nearly did too. But I had got a taste for it, and it was never
that bad again, and I found myself voluntarily popping up to speak to
others branch motions, and again at TUC Women's conference.
Equally
important as official conference business was the informal
networking. NUPE was divided into geographical divisions, and each
had it's divisional dinner. It was standard to visit the other
divisions and join in with the drinking and singing of rebel songs –
the Scottish Division was the best for that. One year in Bournemouth
the hotel messed up the Midlands division bookings and had to
accommodate our entire contingent in the Royal Bath hotel, which was
where the queen stayed. They served gravy (jus?) from saucers with
teaspoons, and the bedrooms were so big that you had to plan your
trip to the bathroom in good time to make sure you weren't cut short.
The carpets were ankle deep and themed. One delegate, a one legged
nurse with a Zapata moustache, accidentally locked himself out of his
room whilst drunkenly searching for the loo. He was naked at the
time, so hopped anxiously up and down the corridor wondering what to
do. He heard an employee coming up the sweeping staircase - “Ey-up
brother, I'm in a spot of bother”.
Those
were the days – when union membership was at its height, when we
joined the mass demos, when we stood outside Tesco collecting food
and money for the miners and marched with them ....... we were
fighting then like we're fighting now. We didn't always get it right,
but our commitment was never in doubt. We supported other workers in
their fights, and they us and that was important. It was hard work
and frustrating; our successes were few. And here we are now, still
fighting the same battles – low pay, cuts, discrimination,
privatisation, and the most right wing government in my lifetime.
And because of trade union legislation, with less tools in our boxes.
I
came to the Labour Party through the Labour movement. The solidarity
I soaked up then is still with me today. I know those days are gone,
and that the LP conference will bear very little resemblance to my
ramblings above. But it's important to remember what it used to be
like, recognise the slow drip drip of change where we only remember
the last attack on our rights rather than the whole journey. What I
do hope though is that we can find some common cause in the four days
we spend together, and recover our purpose – to involve as many
people as possible working together, and to support each other in
doing it, and circumvent the bureaucracy. We did it once – we can
do it again.
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