While the cat's away, the mice will play!

COMMUNITY UNION'S HOT HEADED COMRADES

Comrade Pritchard (in flat cap) GMCUB Chairman

WHEN Sheila Coleman, the Unite union Community Membership Officer, failed to attend the branch meeting of  the Greater Manchester Unite Community Union Branch (GMCUB), on Tuesday 24th April at Unite Salford Quays Office trouble erupted.  Sister Coleman seems to act as a kind of chaperone for this troubled and wayward union branch.

In consequence without her loving and caring attention all hell broke lose, with one robust and militant branch member, Paul Kelly, taking to flailing with his fists at a fellow branch member.  So seemingly frenzied and demented was the Kelly outburst that he had to be restrained briefly by colleagues, while he recovered his composure.  

The Unite Greater Manchester Community Branch has gained a such a reputation of wayward conduct of late, that it has been the subject of special investigation and has had the undivided attention of the Unite officer Ms. Sheila Coleman, who has a distinguished background on Merseyside for campaigning for the victims and families of Hillsborough. 

Last month, it was hoped that with the successful banishment of two disgruntled branch members by suspending them just before the branch AGM, the climate of the branch would cool down a bit.

Alas, it was not to be!  

Last month's suspensions seem merely to have excited people like Mr Kelly, to try to create the conditions for further suspensions and havoc.  

The taste of the blood of the earlier suspensions was apparently too rich for Mr Kelly, and he seems to have become overwrought as the report below of recent allegations in the Salford Star  suggests:

'The President of Salford TUC Paul Kelly has been reported to the Unite Regional Office. The substance of the complaint is that he verbally abused a Unite member prior to a meeting of the Greater Manchester Community Branch on Tuesday 24th April at Unite Salford Quays Office. Furthermore he raised his fists in a threatening and menacing manner and threatened to beat the member up!'

None of this bodes well for May Day and worker's solidarity.  Indeed next Monday, the excitable Mr. Kelly will be speaking on such issues as international comradeship at a May Day event in Salford's Bexley Square alongside the delightful Labour shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey MP.  

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Julie Hesmondhalgh at Alternative Media Event

IS THE MEDIA TURNING ALTERNATIVE? JULIE HESMONDHALGH AND THE SALFORD STAR SPEAK OUT
Media for the Many, not the FewMonday, October 2nd 2pm-4pm The People's Event Marquee, Piccadilly Gardens free
As the Conservative Party Conference kicks off in Manchester, a public meeting on the media is taking place in Piccadilly Gardens, which asks whether a media transformation is taking place, with speakers including Julie Hesmondhalgh and the Salford Star editor. It's hosted by the People's Assembly as part of the Take Back Manchester Festival.

JULIE Hesmondbalgh, the actress, spoke of the good quality drama on TV now, such as she said 'Three Girls' the tale of sexual grooming by Asian gangs in Rochdale and beyond, she said the best work had been about real life situations.  She also claimed that class as a cultural aspect of people's lives had been side-lined and that this was a bad thing.
The event addressed the question of power and influence in the media.  The question asked:
'Is the power of the mainstream media slowly waning, while the influence of the alternative and hyper-local online press grows?' 
For example websites like Salford Star and Northern Voices.
It was also noted that:
 'Six months ago, the media landscape in Britain seemed to be locked up by a handful of moguls and monopolies whose relentless attacks on Corbyn's Labour threatened to condemn progressive politics to the digital wilderness' state the organisers  'But the 2017 election was hailed as a defeat for the 'billionaire' press; Grenfell an awakening of the long ignored voice of the progressive 'many'; and Murdoch's second attempt to take over Sky remains mired in political heat, despite widespread expectations to the contrary.'
People clearly read papers like the Sun and Mail but are seemingly less influenced by what they read in the mass media. 
The author of The BBC: Myth of a Public Service; Tom Mills said that the BBC had become increasingly and deliberately top-down and centralised.  He argued that:
'The BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a liberal bias, the BBC has always sided with the elite.'
Tom Mills demonstrated that we are, in fact, only getting the news that the Establishment wants aired in public:  'Are we witnessing a historic transformation towards a genuinely more diverse, democratic and accountable media in Britain or is media power consolidating in more complex and less visible ways?" 
Mr. Mills asks:  "Can the BBC regain the trust of viewers alienated by its coverage of Brexit and Labour over the last two years?  Will emergent hyper-local and alternative left press online provide a sufficient counterweight to the dominance of corporate media and the Conservative press?'
This is just one of the questions that the public meeting aimed to debate, while a few hundred yards away the Tory Party Conference gushes on, with the party backed by the most of the billionaire press barons.

Stephen Kingston, the Salford Star editor, said that his blog had about 40,000 page-viewings a month, and as a regional media outlet had to confront the Labour Council in Salford and the Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, as well as the issues such as the fall-out from issues such as Grenfell Tower.  He said that it was the job of the alternative media to challenge those in power no matter who they were.
There was some implied suggestions that the 'alternative' media ought rather to be identified as 'independent' or even 'campaigning' rather than 'alternative'.  I was involved in the 1970s and 80s with  Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP), and some people on the left thought that RAP ought to have been a campaigning publication.  At the time I thought they were right, but now I believe that the notion of 'campainging' would have tied RAP into the realm on the fashionable addicts, and by doing so it would have undermind its value.
Steve Sweeney, the Morning Star, journalist, talked about the need for the voices of the left and said people ought to read two newspapers:  the Morning Star and the Financial Times to understand both points of view.

Barry Woodling questioned Justin Schlosberg, senior lecturer in journalism, where Mr. Schlosberg said that the Labour Party election campaign program was a 'radical' paper.  Mr Woodling claimed it was no really radical.  He claimed that it was the Tory Party failures to fight an intellegent campaign rather than the Corbynista campaign, that had helped the Labour party to do better than expected.  He said that the 'dementia tax' was a fatal move.