(NUJ Executive, personal capacity)
A NEW campaign to defend and resource the union's grass-roots has been set up following the most successful NUJ Left meeting for years.
The morale-boosting July 9 meeting laid the basis for a partnership between branch activists and the national executive left minority, which Socialist Outlook supporters have long argued is vital to revitalising the union.
Review Hosted jointly by the NUJ Left and Birmingham NUJ, the meeting was a response to the review of the union's structures and activity ordered by national conference in April.
The union bureaucracy want a review which is exactly the same a the Labour "policy review" - smash the left, reduce rank and file confidence, weaken or even abolish the branches and reduce the democracy of the annual conference.
The cuts in the union strike fund and soaring legal bills reflect a "new realist" response to derecognition - individualising the union into a range of discrete "services" rather than taking steps to rebuild chapel combativity.
Legal action
Union members in trouble are now routinely referred to Messrs. Sue, Grabbit and Runne rather than their chapel or branch.
The Birmingham meeting had a greater sense of urgency in addressing the union's many problems and a far higher level of debate than any recent national executive gettogether (not difficult).
The meeting resolved to set up a high-profile union pressure group, the Branches Network; this will offer the best chance in years to seize the initiative away from the new realist bloc running the union.
While the industrial response to the employers offensive remains fragmented, the meeting heard reports of media workers who are fighting back.
These currently include the joint NUJ/MSF chapel at the Consumers' Association, who have successfully held a series of one-day strikes, journalists at the South London Press who are working to rule, and GMPU printers at Arrowsmiths, Bristol, who have been on strike for 14 months.
The high profile NUJ/Bectu strike action at the BBC has been suspended for a period of negotiations. David Hunt - since reshuffled - and CBI boss Howard Davies.