Aid Conference Birmingham Trades Club, Pershore Road, Birmingham Yugoslavia and the Role of IWA, International, fascism and ex-Yugoslavla, media and the war in Bosnia, Education Aid and student work 2 July 1994, 10.30-5.30pm, REPORTS: The Political Situation in Former British, Office & finance DISCUSSION TOPICS: Campaigning in Trade Unions & direct links with Bosnian TUs, The role of the UN, Fundraising, Women's Appeal for Bosnia, Racism, Open to all supporters of the campaign, plus delegates. Please submit resolutions by 24 June. UNISON activist and conference delegate GEOFF MARTIN takes issue with the conference report in Socialist Outlook 63. Further contributions are invited. THE SOCIALIST Outlook report on the first UNISON Conference cannot be allowed to slip by without further comment, as it totally fails to deal with the structural issues in the new union which were bubbling away below the surface down in Bournemouth.
Of course it was a setback that the strategy for fighting the pay freeze through national action was defeated.
I also agree that it was a victory for the left to get the key motions on defence of the NHS through the conference and probably an even bigger victory to get the motion on Guy's Hospital both discussed and passed.
However, the reporting of the debate on the Affiliated Political Fund is miles wide of the mark. If anyone was being divisive over this issue it was the ex-NALGO CP hacks who were determined to get it on the agenda.
Ex-COHSE and NUPE members are proud of their tradition of affiliation to the Labour Party and were rightly pissed off at the prospect of being elbowed aside by former NALGO members who have never paid into Labour funds.
The issue did become divisive because many ex-COHSE and NUPE activists saw it almost as a last stand for the working class traditions that they brought into the new Union. If you don't believe me then ask yourself why there were only 200 ex-COHSE delegates at the Conference when there were 600 at the final COHSE bash last year.
The rest have voted with their feet because they feel they've been taken over and have no real stake in the new organisation.
I know that it's trendy to say that we shouldn't look at UNISON in terms of the former partner unions. In truth, that's just shorthand for saying accept the takeover and don't object when the ex-NALGO culture, structure and agenda are rammed down your throats.
A classic example is the head office fiasco. Your correspondent seems to think that the defeat of calls for a new head office and centralisation at Mabledon Place is some sort of victory for the left.
Rubbish. What it means is that the old COHSE and NUPE HQ's will be closed, staff sacked and the image of a takeover re-inforced once again.
If the left aren't prepared to accept and defend the cultural and class traditions that NUPE and COHSE activists brought into the new union, we'll be left with nothing much more than a slightly larger white collar union than NALGO was before the merger.
The potential is there to achieve something much better than that: but the Socialist Outlook report on the first conference takes us nowhere.
What do readers think?
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 64, 11 June 1994, Page 5