As the nominations period comes to a close on November 26, Roger Bannister, left candidate for General Secretary of UNISON already has more than 50 nomi. nations from a wide variety of branches across the country His opponent, Dave Prentice claims to be the natural heir of retiring General Secretary Bickerstaffe, but whereas the later got nominations from 12 of the 13 regions of the union. Prentice has managed only 8. Four regions have not nominated a candidate, and London Region decisively supported Bannister by Tz votes to 55 On the very few occasions where there have been hustings. Bannister has then won the nomination. Prentice's campaign has been a negative "extremist", but it is not clear that such a cactic is reaping any fruit. It is true that the position taken by the left and Bannister of opposing the Single Status agreement in local government - based on the levelling down not levelling up of conditions - was not widely understood beyond a layer of activists.
As time goes by, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that what we warned was accurate: the agreement is being used more and more by employers to attack the workforce.
The left and Roger Bannister were also in a minority in pushing for UNISON to call the highly successful demonstration on low pay. The union leadership did everything they could to prever it being agreed and then to undermine the possibility that it would be a success. However the size of the demonstration - despite it being called in Newcastle - proved that the left is far less isolated that the right would like to believe.
Prentice also claims that he is an 'independent' candidate who owes no one any favours - but he appears to be deeply implicated in the recent decision to call off the pay ballot for ancillary staff in the NHS - apparently because the employers were about to make an offer but wouldn't do so unless the ballot was cancelled. So far there has still been no word from the employers.
All of this demonstrates that despite their best efforts, the witch hunt waged by the bureaucracy over recent years has done nothing to silence the left - or to isolate us from a broader constituency in the union. The Bannister campaign needs to be used to further strengthen our resistance on key issues facing the membership - and the potential that it can do so is already being