'RACISM' LACKS A DEFINITION, Let's Thank GOD! by Brian Bamford

IN 1959, I went to the branch meeting of my local Rochdale ETU branch one Friday night to try to raise the issue of the boycott of South African goods with the elctricians there. I was a 19-year-old apprentice at the time and the TUC, the Labour Party and the Liberal Party had all declared their backing for this international campaign which had been called for in November 1959 by the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

As a young man I was surprised first by the lack of interest of the ETU branch officers, and remember the ETU was then regarded as a militant communist trade union, who despite my protests didn't see any point in my request that the branch should discuss the international boycott campaign. They were too busy collecting the members subscription as they were queuing-up to pay before going out on the razzle as it was Friday night. As I tried to interest a West Indian electrician the chairman, who had become tired of my appeals for support, asked the assembled members if anyone was anxious to discuss the topic of the boycott of South African goods? The silence was deafening! Even the one black man present didn't show any interest.

It took many more years of international struggle before South Africa obtained anything approaching freedom and aparthied was removed.

Yet according to Kader Asmal: ‘If any event galvanised the Boycott Movement into action it was Chief Albert Luthuli’s plea for sanctions”¦’ Luthuli’s statement reads: ‘I appeal to all governments throughout the world, to people everywhere, to all organisations and institutions in every land and at every level to act now to impose such sanctions on South Africa that will bring about the vital necessary change and avert what can become the greatest African tragedy of our time.’

Apathy & Pleading Petitions

I was reminded of this disinterested apathy of these 1950's north of England trade unionists when I was recently urged to sign a petition to support the three footballers who according to the media had been racially abused for missing a penalty in last Sunday's Euro Final.

The protest petition reads:

'Three black football players have received a storm of racist abuse after England lost the final. We can't let such hatred go unchallenged -- so let's meet it with a deafening public cry of support from across the country. Add your name to the public letter below, and when we reach 100,000 names, Avaaz will publish in a major national newspaper.'

The petition pleads the case further:

'Within minutes of England losing the match, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were flooded with cruel, racist messages towards the players. Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel have since condemned the abuse -- but only after they'd originally undermined anti-racism gestures by the team earlier in the competition.'

'Let's show these three black players, and the whole country, that racism has no place here. That as ordinary citizens, we will not sit by as a small minority of people spew their hatred and ignorance. But more than that, let's show the children of this country what it truly means to be English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and BRITISH in the 21st century.'

Worthy words indeed!

'Racism' is not defined! Racial discrimination is!

My understanding is that the United Nations (UN) does not define 'racism' as such; however, it does define 'racial discrimination'. According to the 1965 UN International Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, '...the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distintion, exclusion, restriction, or prefernce base on race, colour, desent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundimental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.'[

'Racism' is clearly not defined by the UN because it is ambiguous and is often used as an ideological swear word by the liberal left in much the same way as the word 'Facist' was used in the 1930s as a term of abuse. Despite the fact that one such petition had more than a million signatures on it according to Woman's Hour today I doubt that the culture will change and I suspect that many people will find this kind od virtue signaling turns their stomachs. Even if Gareth Southgate OBE is ever such a nice bloke.

As they say 'Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same'.

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Unite Sharon Graham's plan for a new workplace politics by Brian Bamford

THE UNITE ELECTION for GENERAL SECRETARY

Playing Politics or having control in the Workplace?

At the end of June the fringe website WORKERS' LIBERTY announced:

'Unite General Secretary candidate Sharon Graham’s proposals for “a Workers’ Politics” point in the wrong direction. In many respects they are a regression from Unite’s current political strategy.

'The wider output from Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace”. She has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”). In fact Graham lumps Turner and right-wing candidate Gerard Coyne together as the Westminster Brigade, as if Coyne rather than Turner winning would not matter!'

The website continues:

'Effective working-class politics does need to be rooted in strong workplace and community organisation and struggles, as opposed to just senior union officials hobnobbing with politicians or social media output; but Graham's stance is reactionary populist posturing.'

This small leftist body WORKERS' LIBERTY focuses here upon the spirit of syndicalism in Sharon Graham's strategy and calls it 'a regression from Unite’s current political strategy'.

They argue 'Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace” and that she 'has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”).'

In her own election address Sharon says: 'I am not supported by any clique of MP's. I don't have the machine of the current regime.'

THE HISTORICAL TRADITION of BRITISH SYNDICALISM

THE program set out clearly by Sharon Graham today has roots that go deep in the history of British, and indeed, European trade unionsm. It encompasses ideas that stretch back to the foundation of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in the 19th century and was popular before the First World War in 1912 when 'The Miners' Next Step' was formulated and articulated as a project for workplace syndicalism and workers' control.

The Guild Socialist and historian G.D.H. Cole has described how British trade unionists tend to return to militant workplace activity in periods when parliamentary politics fails. If Sharon Graham's message today is anything to go by we may well be entering one of those phases. As I read through the addresses of the candidates for the Unite General Secretary today there seems to be an air of disillusionment with party politics and politicians.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that Sharon Graham is cynically drawing upon a 'reactionary popularist posturing' as the hole-in-the-corner Marxists of the 'WORKERS' ALLIANCE' seem to be suggesting in their critique above. Reading her address it seems to me that she is drawing upon her own insider knowledge and experience to articulate a narative of what could be called modern workplace syndicalism. It is not surprising that the politicians are in bad odour right now. They seem to lack common decency and that goes for the Labour Party as well.

Blacklisting & LABOUR'S Defence of the Boss's Right to Vet

IT not surprising that I note that the Manchester UNITE EPIU Contracting Branch North West/1400 have nominated Sharon Graham. This Manchester branch spearheaded the campaign that led to the exposure of the Consulting Association blacklist in the British building industry in 2009. The reason that the Manchester electricians would be sceptical about professional politicians can be found in a letter sent in 2008 to Graham Brady, then a Conservative MP representing one of the blacklisted Manchester electricians; in this letter dated 30th, April 2008, the then Labour Minister for Employment Relations & Postal Affairs, Pat McFadden wrote:

'Employers often vet the people they hire. It is not the policy of the Government to make it unlawful for employers to undertake such necessary vetting in a systematic way, conferring with previous employers as required. However... the Government is aware that irresponsible vetting can lead to abuse...' Then he reassures Mr. Brady MP and his blacklisted constituwent by sternly declaring: 'The Government remains vigilant in this matter and my Department monitors the evidence that information about trade unionists is being misused to discourage employers from hiring them.'

In truth we now know for sure that blacklisting in the Britsh building trade flourished under Labour Goverments because a year later in 2009, the Consulting Assocation and its blacklist files compiled bt Ian Kerr were sucessfuly confiscated by Dave Clancy, the Infomation Commisiioner. It is with our current knowledge of politicians of all governments have a habit of looking the other way and allowing lives to be ruined by blacklist files. With her knowlege of the BESNA in construction and the leverage campaigns she is able to state: 'We can't rely on politicians and I won't be signing any blank cheques for any party [and] I will stop us becoming a branch of the Labour Party, by moving beyond factions and focusing on policies.'

It is this refreshing down to earth approach to the everyday reality that makes Sharon Graham the ideal candidate for those of us who are sick of the fashionable addicion to virtue signaling and delight in someone who has the spirit of everyday reality about her. The alternative candidates Gerald Coyne and Steve Turner both seem to have a flavour of the political factionalism of current mediocre politics.

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TRIBUNE on Union Blacklisting Complicity

STATEMENT FROM BLACKLIST SUPPORT GROUP

When the campaign over blacklisting started, we concentrated our efforts on exposing the conspiracy by big business and the police. It was directors of multinational corporations who ran the notoriously anti-union Economic League and Consulting Association blacklists, in an operation that lasted five decades and involved a two-way sharing of intelligence about union activists between company executives and Britain’s most secretive political police units.

Over the past twelve years, the exposure of corporate and state wrongdoing has led to new legislation, a select committee investigation, record compensation and a public apology in the High Court, and a dedicated union strand in the ongoing public inquiry into undercover policing. The Blacklist Support Group acknowledge the important role played by the trade unions in our campaign for justice.

But there remains unfinished business. It was known from the very beginning that some blacklist documentation included entries where full-time union officials were recorded as the source of the information. blacklistMultiple files include the entry ‘EETPU says NO’, a fact so appalling that the select committee investigation even discussed it. Witness statements prepared by blacklisting managers for the High Court trial claim that some union officials provided them with information.

In his statement, Trevor Watcham—a former chairman of the Consulting Association—claims to have shared a table at an Economic League event with ‘Leon Brittan of the Conservative Party (who had been the main speaker) and Eric Hammond of the electricians’ union together with some members of his union executive’. Norman Tebbit’s recent revelations about secret meetings with the EETPU General Secretary only add to the growing pile of evidence that union collusion in blacklisting took place at the highest levels. This is totally unacceptable, and the union movement needs to face up to this unsavoury aspect of its past.

But this treachery did not occur in a vacuum. To understand why this happened it is necessary to appreciate the industrial relations context of the construction industry. For decades, the leadership of the construction unions adopted strategies that concentrated on winning favour with employers rather than mobilising supposedly ‘self-employed’ workers to take action.

In their hunt for members, the union bureaucracy made sweetheart deals with employers that abandoned the most basic principles of trade unionism. The right wing EETPU was expelled from the TUC following their support of Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping dispute that saw over 6,000 unionised print workers lose their jobs overnight. Branches that opposed the leadership were closed down and leading left-wing members repeatedly disciplined or expelled. As an aside, the Labour MP John Spellar was the Political Officer for EETPU throughout this period.

But it was not just EETPU: other construction unions also adopted overtly business friendly strategies. Bulk membership agreements — where a union official strikes a deal with a manager to pay a set amount of union subs each month without ever talking to the workers—might sound like gangster-style protection money to buy industrial peace, but they were common in the sector.

The phenomenon of appointed convenors, where a union regional secretary and a major employer would jointly agree on who the full-time union representative on a project should be, in the vast majority of cases without any election by the workforce, has existed for decades and continues to this day. Companies guilty of blacklisting union activists were often the most vocal in their support for appointed convenors, who became incorporated into corporate industrial relations and safety structures. The lack of democracy and potential for favouritism in the opaque appointment process is obvious and has no place in any union that claims to be member-led.

To be clear, it is not every union official in construction. Many are honest, value-driven trade unionists who have stood up for workers’ rights. But it is beyond doubt that over a fifty-year period, some general secretaries, some senior union officials, and some appointed convenors formed overly cosy relationships with employers.

Enjoying hospitality in pubs, restaurants, and hotels, or attending sporting events with industrial relations managers from blacklisting firms was viewed as acceptable practice. Press reports from the 1990s actually name UCATT and TGWU officials accused of taking bribes and other inducements from employers, including procurement of prostitutes.

A revolving door exists through which, upon leaving the union, officials regularly take up positions as industrial relations consultants working for the very construction firms they previously negotiated against. It is in this context that gossip about ‘troublesome’ left-wing union activists gets discussed – and appears on blacklist files.

While many cases may be ‘loose talk’ encouraged by alcohol, in some cases the collusion in blacklisting appears more premeditated. It was documentary evidence that forced blacklisted union members to write an open letter in 2016 calling for a fully independent investigation into potential collusion by union officials in blacklisting their own members. The letter states that ‘every union activist in construction knows who the named officials are, as does every major employer’, and describes potential collusion as an ‘open sore’ within Unite.

Branches flooded the Unite Executive Council with motions and in 2019 an independent QC led investigation to look into possible collusion was set up by Len McCluskey. Blacklist Support Group applauded the Unite independent investigation, encouraging anyone with documents or oral testimony that may be relevant to contact lawyers collating evidence.

Solicitors have travelled the country taking witness statements from blacklisted workers who have made serious allegations, including claims that some officials gave evidence at Employment Tribunals in support of the employers, rather than in support of sacked union members. And this is only the beginning, even more documentary evidence has been presented to the investigation by activists.

This includes Subject Access Request disclosures that show that a number of senior union officials were blind copying internal emails about union activists to third parties – including to industrial relations consultants working for blacklisting firms. Searches of Companies House database have discovered that some construction union officials were directors of consultancies providing services to the industry while they were employed by the union. This needs to be fully investigated at the very least.

Yet despite making good progress early on, the Unite investigation appears to have ground to a halt during Covid-19. Jane McNeill QC, the independent lawyer who will write the final report, has only just been formally appointed, and a full search of the Unite ICT system and the archives of predecessor unions has yet to take place. Everyone accepts that the unions and lawyers have been exceptionally busy during the pandemic. But if courts and public inquiries are operating, the investigation into possible collusion should also be able to continue.

The election for the next general secretary of Unite is now underway. The Blacklist Support Group calls upon every candidate to publicly pledge that the investigation into union collusion will continue under their watch, and that if any officials currently employed by the union are criticised in the final QC written report, that they will face appropriate disciplinary action.

The investigation into union collusion in blacklisting is a key battle in the long-term struggle over the very soul of trade unionism in construction. It begs the question: what kind of trade unionism do workers deserve?

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Binmen kick up a stink in aid of Batley teacher

by Camilla Turner, Daily Telegraph, Education Editor

When a teacher was suspended from his school after showing a picture of the Prophet Mohammed in class, he reportedly felt as though he had been “thrown under a bus”.

The National Education Union (NEU), was accused of failing to stand up for its own member after it did not immediately condemn the threats of violence and intimidation he faced in the wake of the row.

But now, the Batley Grammar School religious studies teacher has found unlikely support from a Bury branch of Unite, which largely represents binmen.

Brian Bamford, secretary of Tameside Trade Union Council, has submitted an emergency motion for the National Conference of Trade Union Councils in June to champion the cause of the suspended teacher.

The motion urges the NEU and all other unions to support the teacher and to publicly condemn those demanding his dismissal.

It notes that blasphemy laws were abolished more than a decade ago, and adds that “dogmatic restraints” should not be imposed on the religious education curriculum.

Mr Bamford is also secretary of Bury Unite commercial branch in the North West, which represents binmen across the borough, and the motion’s wording had to be approved by the branch committee before being passed up to the Tameside TUC which it is affiliated to.

"This is a motion which has come in from bin men, from ordinary working people," said Mr Bamford, a retired electrician who has been active in the trade union movement since the 1970s.

“As far as I can see, staying silent goes contrary to what we believe in at our branch, and especially in the trade congress.

“We are affiliated to the Orwell Society and freedom of expression is very important. I don’t feel guilty in any way for taking a stand on this issue.”

Mr Bamford claimed that an NEU official attempted to pressurise him into withdrawing the motion on the basis that it was “unhelpful” to draw further attention to the issue.

He said he was phoned by the official who asked him to "reconsider" the motion since it "risks inflaming what is an extremely sensitive and very complex situation" for members.

Mr Bamford was told that the NEU has an obligation to the “wider community in Batley" and that any further attention on the matter would "set back quite sensitive negotiations".

But he said he has no intention of abandoning the motion, adding that the school curriculum should not be “dictated by an indignant mob” who congregated outside Batley Grammar School just before the Easter break.

“We are troubled that a teacher can be suspended following protests about his teaching methods and use of materials,” Mr Bamford said.

“We are outraged that the teachers involved are being challenged for trying to broaden their students' horizons and encourage their critical thought.

“We don't believe that the determination of the use of teaching resources in a school should be influenced by people taking offence, and using intimidation and threats.”

Batley Grammar School sent pupils home early for the Easter holidays and issued an apology after a group of Muslims gathered at the gates to protest. The headmaster announced that the religious studies teacher had been suspended while the school looked into what happened.

The 29-year-old teacher and his family went into hiding after reportedly receiving death threats in the wake of the protests. The academy trust that runs Batley Grammar School announced at the end of March that it would carry out an “independent” investigation into the context in which the cartoon was shown.

A by-election has been triggered in Batley after Tracy Brabin stepped down as MP when she was elected as West Yorkshire's first metro mayor.

Ms Brabin, 60, replaced Jo Cox as Batley and Spen MP in a by-election in 2016 after Ms Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist. The seat will be seen as a key test for Labour after the party lost the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives earlier this month.

An NEU spokesperson said: "It is a sensitive issue and the NEU did ask for the motion to be withdrawn. With every viewpoint that is expressed our members face yet more public exposure."

They added that "speculation is unhelpful, not least for our members who the NEU are fully supporting throughout this investigation and will be doing so beyond the investigation".

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NEU: An Apology For A Union by Les May

FIRST a declaration of interests:

I spent 44 of my 49 years of working life in education; twenty five of them in secondary schools, hence my interest in the action, or more correctly, the inaction, of the National Education Union (NEU) in defending the teachers at Batley Grammar School.

The National Education Union (NEU) is determined to avoid any scrutiny by the media of what is actually happening at the school by claiming that the matter is close to being resolved. Not only is scrutiny by the media unwelcome but the NEU is keeping its own members in the dark, members who pay their union subscriptions in the hope that if their livelihood and well being come under attack for any reason connected with their employment, the union will defend them.

The events which have led to one teacher going into hiding in fear of his life took place on 22 March. A group of parents demanding that he be sacked and they be allowed to determine the contents of the Religious Studies curriculum began to demonstrate in the days following as was widely reported at the time.

The May/June 2021 edition of ‘educate’ the magazine published bimonthly by the NEU contains a four page report of the online annual conference held between 7 and 9 April including a short 150 word piece which uses the words ‘free speech’ no less than four times, but no mention of the goings on at Batley Grammar School, though there was plenty of time for a piece to be included and members informed of the union’s stance.

Donald Trump was widely attacked in the media by those who uphold basic democratic values for his unwillingness to condemn those who peddle extremist philosophies. When it comes to making an unequivocal statement utterly condemning the behaviour of those who have brought about this threat to the life of one of the teachers concerned and who continue to try to dictate to our society what should be taught in our schools, the NEU has shown itself to be an abject failure and an apology for a union. Insisting that those of us who are not followers of Islam should be forced to follow any of its precepts is an extremist philosophy. It is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say so and it is time NEU said so.

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What Are Trades Unions For? by Les May

WHY has it taken a Tory MP, Brendan Clarke-Smith to point out that the primary function of a union, in this case the National Education Union, is to defend its members? He was referring to the incident at Batley Grammar School where a teacher was suspended, then the school's headmaster seems to have made a grovelling apology and protesters are demanding his sacking of the teacher who it seems has offended their delicate sensibilities.

It should not be a problem to condemn it and say it is wrong. I would assume there is some political sensitivity and perhaps [the NEU] is reluctant to stick its neck out. Given that its primary function is to defend teachers, you would have thought it would be prepared to say that 'threats are unacceptable.'

The Daily Telegraph reports that the MP, a former religious studies teacher, also said "political sensitivity" should not stop the NEU from speaking out to defend one of its own members, adding: I think you should immediately condemn threats and intimidation and violence, wherever you are across the political divide.

The Evening Standard reports the Archbishop of Canterbury as saying; In other words, exercise your freedom of speech, but don’t prevent other people exercising their freedom of speech. How nice it would be to hear that from all our MPs.

Teachers must be wondering why they have bothered to pay their union subscriptions all these years.

I do not ask for the right to offend anyone, I do assert my right to ignore the claims of anyone who says they are offended.

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“Farce”, education union funds Muslim charity that publicised Batley teacher’s name

FROM 'The Foxhole' website

1 April 2021

A teacher’s union has given £3,000 to a controversial Muslim charity linked to the Batley RS teacher’s ongoing suspension, the Telegraph reveals.

Batley Grammar School hit the headlines last week after angry members of the local Muslim community amassed outside the school’s premises calling for the teacher’s dismissal after he had shown his class images of the Prophet Muhammad. Caving in to pressure, the teacher was suspended and the school issued a grovelling apology.

Purpose of Life caused astonishment on the back of the events in revealing the teacher’s name. He and his family then went into hiding, fearing jihadist reprisals. The charity’s leader, Mohammad Sajad Hussain was invited onto Talk Radio and asked whether he did not think he had a responsibility to avoid inflaming the situation, having accused the teacher of “terrorism” and “insulting Islam”.

Asked five times by host, Julia Hartley-Brewer whether he thought showing images of the Prophet was worse than beheadings, Hussain only said no at the fifth and final time of asking.

Earlier this week, the father of the teacher said his son’s life was in danger. “Eventually they will get my son and he knows this. His whole world has been turned upside down. He’s devastated and crushed,” he told the Daily Mail.

The distraught father also said the school had thrown “him under a bus”. Purpose of Life continues to call for his sacking.

Now it has been discovered the union representing Batley grammar gave a generous donation to the charity, which then posted a video on social media thanking the now-disgraced union.

Reacting to the contribution made by its Kirklees branch, the National Education Union admitted the West Yorkshire charity should “never have published” the teacher’s name. The NEU spokesperson pointed out that Purpose of Life had “now withdrawn the name and apologised”, adding: “We would ask all media and all other organisations to refrain from naming names. We believe this to be a major breach of privacy with serious repercussions for our member.”

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission said: “We are aware of this matter. We have contacted the trustees of Purpose of Life for further information and their response to our regulatory concerns – this will inform our next steps. We cannot comment further at this time.”

Dr Paul Stott of freedom and democracy think tank, the Henry Jackson Society was much more forthright: “There is now a real question mark about the ability of the NEU to represent its members at Batley Grammar School. That the Kirklees branch of the NEU has funded an organisation that calls for the sacking of a schoolteacher for doing his job is lamentable.

“The NEU now needs to review the organisations it funds and works with to avoid a repetition of this farce.”

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What A Farce by Les May

A RECENT article in The Telegraph claimed that the Kirklees branch of the National Education Union (NEU) gave £3,000 to Purpose of Life, a charity based in West Yorkshire, which later published online the name of the teacher at the centre of the row at Batley Grammar School.

As well as accusing the teacher of 'terrorism' and 'insulting Islam', the group's chief executive, Mohammad Sajad Hussain, said that the charity would not work with the school again until the Religous Studies teacher is 'permanently removed'.

The Kirklees branch is, of course, the one ‘supporting’ the teacher through the disciplinary process initiated by the school. Quite why this NEU branch thought that this donation was an appropriate use of its members’ union fees is unclear.

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The Great Post Office Strike of 1971

by DAVE CHAPPLE

The 15th February 1971 was United Kingdom Decimalisation Day: no longer were there 12 pennies to a shilling, half-crowns, or 240 pennies to the pound. That day, 50 years ago, was also just over half-way through the greatest strike this country had seen since the General Strike of 1926: the 44-day national strike of 200,000 Post Office workers.

Telegraphists, telephonists, Post Office counter clerks, cleaners, postmen (170,000 of them!) and PHGs (Postmen Higher Grade), members of the Union of Post Office Workers, struck for their claim of 15%, or £3 a week for lower-paid grades such as cleaners. They picketed, they lobbied, they marched, but after six and a half weeks they went back to work defeated: why was that? This article attempts to find an answer.

In October 1969 the Post Office Corporation was created, carved out of an iconic part of the British Civil Service. Profits and budgets were increasingly emphasised at the expense of public service obligations, while Civil Service collective bargaining was side lined. When Ted Heath’s Tory Government was elected in 1970, many right-wing Tory MPs like Christopher Chataway, the new Posts Minister, openly argued for the part-privatisation of the vastly profitable telecommunications part of the Post Office.

On November 24th 1970, just after the UPW submitted its claim for 15%, the Tories sacked Lord Hall, the Labour Government-appointed Post Office Chairman. Result: spontaneous UPW walkouts in many large sorting offices! Bill Ryland, his replacement, was a Post Office career man with a mission to ‘modernise.’ That meant maximising telecoms profits, mechanising sorting offices, and replacing straight wage rises with productivity schemes.

Inflation was rampant, and the UPW claim for 15% would mean, at least, a real rather than an apparent pay rise. The Post Office offered 7%, then raised it to 8%. The UPW Executive Council, with Tom Jackson as General Secretary, saw this as an insult, and, under UPW Rules, without a ballot, called an all-out national strike from Wednesday January 20th!

Militant day telephonists at the Bristol UPW Rally in the Colston Hall, January 1971. Pic Bristol Evening Post From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

The last Bristol strike rally at Queen’s Square was snowbound: speaking is deputy branch secretary Monty Banks. Strikers carried a black coffin, borrowed from the Cardiff Outdoor UPW Branch, on which was painted: “Here lies the body of Postman Sid: he could not exist on fourteen quid!”

If the postmen, PHGs and telegraphists were solidly behind the UPW, the strike did have its weaknesses. Some Post Office Crown Offices were open, and, at the start, staffed by UPW striking volunteers on pension and social security days, until strikers refused to work alongside scabs. Telephonists were the weak link: only a minority of night full-time male telephonists were in any union, and many were in the non-TUC National Guild of Telephonists; many female day telephonists were UPW, but others were non-union. Not surprisingly, it was outside the main city telephone exchanges that angry mass picketing took place. Police were often called out, as scabs alleged harassment, and pickets complained of liquids being poured on them from the exchange’s upper floors. Many telephonists came away in tears from claiming their last pre-strike wage, £8, paid in arrears, when managers withheld a five-pound note and told them: “You will get this only if you stay in work now!”

The telephonists grade apart, the strike was solid from beginning to end: there was no drift back to work at all. This applied to rural areas as well as cities. In Ilfracombe, North Devon, Mike Creek, for decades now the Ilfracombe TUC Secretary, recalls that only one PHG UPW member scabbed, out of a branch of 53. Mike says this PHG was given a hard time for years afterwards.

In Bridgwater, Somerset, postman Eric Payne remembers shouting out “The wages of sin are death!”, to a solitary scab who gave a religious excuse for crossing the picket line. The only scab in the Bridgwater Crown Post Office Counter was a Tory Borough Councillor, Trevor Donaldson. The Middlezoy village postman Leggatt scabbed, delivering letters from one part of this Sedgemoor village to another, but then, as Bridgwater striking postmen pointed out angrily, he had his own market garden business!

The UPW only had £330,000 in its strike fund on January 16th, which did not go far, with 200,000 strikers! Public support was impressive: one survey claimed 47% sympathy, which was unprecedented for a trade union dispute. A postman’s wife in Totton, Southampton had her strike collection of £15 confiscated by the police!

It was generally agreed that the union had the better of the strike publicity: why then, did Tom Jackson and the UPW Executive Council call off the strike, suddenly and without any warning to the members, after six weeks, with nothing but a state-sponsored Inquiry to compensate for the abandonment of its 15% claim?

The ‘official’ UPW reason given was a simple one: the union had run out of money and was close to bankruptcy. Of course, the hardship fund was running out, but this explanation cannot, surely, be accepted by historians now, without investigating alternative strategies that had been, and were available to WIN the dispute.

What were they? First and perhaps foremost, the UPW could have asked the other Post Office unions to show real solidarity and strike with them till they won. The UPW could even have called out its own “Ship to Shore” radio operators, such as its members at Portishead Radio Station in Somerset: only a few hundred UPW members nationally, yet crucial to the whole operation of the UK merchant fleet; the UPW could also have appealed to ASTMS members (‘Left-winger’ Clive Jenkins union) who staffed the Telex Service to strike in sympathy. POMSA, the Post Office Management Staff Association, had many members who wanted to walk out with their UPW colleagues, but they were never asked. George Massey, the Communist POMSA Secretary for Bristol, remembered secretly collecting money for the UPW strike fund from about 20% of his supervisor members at the Small Street Head Post Office.

Most important, of all these sister Post Office unions, the UPW should have appealed to the powerful skilled Post Office Engineering Union, whose telephone engineers, despite automatic STD/Subscriber Trunk Dialling, could have put major pressure on industry and commerce. Despite a one-day POEU strike in solidarity with the UPW towards the end of February, this was too little and far too late. If their General Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, might have been less than keen, what about the POEU Branches and members?

Second, the TUC, and especially the key TUC unions, including those ‘left-wing’ led such as ASTMS, the AEU and the TGWU, need not have failed the UPW. When they failed the UPW, failing with either substantial hardship donations or supportive strike action, they should have been challenged and publicly shamed. After all, even from a ‘reformist’ parliamentary-socialist outlook, it was surely in the interests of their own members to ensure the UPW was not defeated!

The National Union of Railwaymen, 600,000 strong, had a pay claim lodged at the same time as the UPW. Even if they had struck for their own aims, Robert Carr and Ted Heath would have been forced to settle both NUR and UPW claims to the full. Yet right-wing NUR General Secretary Sidney Greene was incapable, or unwilling, to see this opportunity to strike alongside the UPW, probably defeat the Tory Government, and advance his own members standard of living.

The Tory Industrial Relations Bill, sponsored by Home Office Minister Robert Carr, was being opposed by the TUC, somewhat inconsistently at first, but one TUC-sponsored London Rally during the UPW strike, on 23rd February, had called over 100,000 trades unionists out. At that Hyde Park Rally, Tom Jackson was the most popular speaker, while the forked tongue of TUC General Secretary Vic Feather ‘gave his full support.’ When Feather failed to deliver on this TUC promise, and others, Tom Jackson kept silent, and when the strike collapsed, allowed his members’ anger to be concentrated upon himself.

The trade union movement in the UK in 1970 was, in numbers of members, number of shop stewards, number of closed shop agreements and numbers of disputes, extremely strong. Strong enough to force the TUC to call a one-day general strike against the Industrial Relations Bill: so why not a general strike to support the UPW? Such a strike would not even have been illegal, as it would have been by 1984! The TUC General Council also promised workplace collections that came to nothing. While some unions gave substantial donations, others made double-edged loans to the UPW: the NUR loaned £100,000; the TGWU, the AEU and the Furniture Trade Union £50,000 each. Yet, it was just these loans, or the UPW’s inability to re-pay, which, after four or five weeks, caused the UPW’s bankers to threaten the confiscation of the union’s Clapham HQ.

Trains and lorries carried vast numbers of parcels throughout the strike, which, despite donations to the UPW, the NUR and TGWU did little or nothing to prevent. Local Government and Civil Service union members were allowed by their leaders to deliver mail between their departments.

All in all, if the strategic thinking of the UPW leadership was non-existent, and its tactics both timid and over-confident, it was the TUC and the trade union movement that deserves most of the blame, they clearly deserted the UPW in 1971, its unique time of great need. With creditors pressing, the UPW Executive lost its confidence, as suddenly as the strike had been called. Feelers were put out; the Post Office, sensing UPW surrender, ‘chivalrously’ agreed a binding Court of Inquiry into the dispute, and so, on March 3rd 1971, the UPW Executive, led by Jackson, put the union’s bureaucracy and bricks and mortar before its membership, and decided by 27 votes to 4 to call an immediate Branch Ballot for a return to work.

These meetings were held within 5 days, amid some accusations of undue haste: for example, Mount Pleasant meetings were always held on Sundays, yet many members awoke on that Sunday to find their branch meeting had already been called on the Saturday! Moreover, if a Branch of 2,000 members had voted to call the strike off by 1,100 votes to 900, under UPW Rules, all 2,000 votes were cast for ending the strike. The final vote, translated into actual membership figures, was 190,614 to 10,427.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

The last Bristol strike rally at Queen’s Square was snowbound: speaking is deputy branch secretary Monty Banks. Strikers carried a black coffin, borrowed from the Cardiff Outdoor UPW Branch, on which was painted: “Here lies the body of Postman Sid: he could not exist on fourteen quid!”

If the postmen, PHGs and telegraphists were solidly behind the UPW, the strike did have its weaknesses. Some Post Office Crown Offices were open, and, at the start, staffed by UPW striking volunteers on pension and social security days, until strikers refused to work alongside scabs. Telephonists were the weak link: only a minority of night full-time male telephonists were in any union, and many were in the non-TUC National Guild of Telephonists; many female day telephonists were UPW, but others were non-union.

Not surprisingly, it was outside the main city telephone exchanges that angry mass picketing took place. Police were often called out, as scabs alleged harassment, and pickets complained of liquids being poured on them from the exchange’s upper floors. Many telephonists came away in tears from claiming their last pre-strike wage, £8, paid in arrears, when managers withheld a five-pound note and told them: “You will get this only if you stay in work now!”

The telephonists grade apart, the strike was solid from beginning to end: there was no drift back to work at all. This applied to rural areas as well as cities. In Ilfracombe, North Devon, Mike Creek, for decades now the Ilfracombe TUC Secretary, recalls that only one PHG UPW member scabbed, out of a branch of 53. Mike says this PHG was given a hard time for years afterwards.

In Bridgwater, Somerset, postman Eric Payne remembers shouting out “The wages of sin are death!”, to a solitary scab who gave a religious excuse for crossing the picket line. The only scab in the Bridgwater Crown Post Office Counter was a Tory Borough Councillor, Trevor Donaldson. The Middlezoy village postman Leggatt scabbed, delivering letters from one part of this Sedgemoor village to another, but then, as Bridgwater striking postmen pointed out angrily, he had his own market garden business!

The UPW only had £330,000 in its strike fund on January 16th, which did not go far, with 200,000 strikers! Public support was impressive: one survey claimed 47% sympathy, which was unprecedented for a trade union dispute. A postman’s wife in Totton, Southampton had her strike collection of £15 confiscated by the police!

It was generally agreed that the union had the better of the strike publicity: why then, did Tom Jackson and the UPW Executive Council call off the strike, suddenly and without any warning to the members, after six weeks, with nothing but a state-sponsored Inquiry to compensate for the abandonment of its 15% claim?

The ‘official’ UPW reason given was a simple one: the union had run out of money and was close to bankruptcy. Of course, the hardship fund was running out, but this explanation cannot, surely, be accepted by historians now, without investigating alternative strategies that had been, and were available to WIN the dispute.

What were they? First and perhaps foremost, the UPW could have asked the other Post Office unions to show real solidarity and strike with them till they won. The UPW could even have called out its own “Ship to Shore” radio operators, such as its members at Portishead Radio Station in Somerset: only a few hundred UPW members nationally, yet crucial to the whole operation of the UK merchant fleet; the UPW could also have appealed to ASTMS members (‘Left-winger’ Clive Jenkins union) who staffed the Telex Service to strike in sympathy. POMSA, the Post Office Management Staff Association, had many members who wanted to walk out with their UPW colleagues, but they were never asked. George Massey, the Communist POMSA Secretary for Bristol, remembered secretly collecting money for the UPW strike fund from about 20% of his supervisor members at the Small Street Head Post Office.

Most important, of all these sister Post Office unions, the UPW should have appealed to the powerful skilled Post Office Engineering Union, whose telephone engineers, despite automatic STD/Subscriber Trunk Dialling, could have put major pressure on industry and commerce. Despite a one-day POEU strike in solidarity with the UPW towards the end of February, this was too little and far too late. If their General Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, might have been less than keen, what about the POEU Branches and members? Second, the TUC, and especially the key TUC unions, including those ‘left-wing’ led such as ASTMS, the AEU and the TGWU, need not have failed the UPW. When they failed the UPW, failing with either substantial hardship donations or supportive strike action, they should have been challenged and publicly shamed. After all, even from a ‘reformist’ parliamentary-socialist outlook, it was surely in the interests of their own members to ensure the UPW was not defeated!

The National Union of Railwaymen, 600,000 strong, had a pay claim lodged at the same time as the UPW. Even if they had struck for their own aims, Robert Carr and Ted Heath would have been forced to settle both NUR and UPW claims to the full. Yet right-wing NUR General Secretary Sidney Greene was incapable, or unwilling, to see this opportunity to strike alongside the UPW, probably defeat the Tory Government, and advance his own members standard of living.

The Tory Industrial Relations Bill, sponsored by Home Office Minister Robert Carr, was being opposed by the TUC, somewhat inconsistently at first, but one TUC-sponsored London Rally during the UPW strike, on 23rd February, had called over 100,000 trades unionists out. At that Hyde Park Rally, Tom Jackson was the most popular speaker, while the forked tongue of TUC General Secretary Vic Feather ‘gave his full support.’ When Feather failed to deliver on this TUC promise, and others, Tom Jackson kept silent, and when the strike collapsed, allowed his members’ anger to be concentrated upon himself.

The trade union movement in the UK in 1970 was, in numbers of members, number of shop stewards, number of closed shop agreements and numbers of disputes, extremely strong. Strong enough to force the TUC to call a one-day general strike against the Industrial Relations Bill: so why not a general strike to support the UPW? Such a strike would not even have been illegal, as it would have been by 1984! The TUC General Council also promised workplace collections that came to nothing. While some unions gave substantial donations, others made double-edged loans to the UPW: the NUR loaned £100,000; the TGWU, the AEU and the Furniture Trade Union £50,000 each. Yet, it was just these loans, or the UPW’s inability to re-pay, which, after four or five weeks, caused the UPW’s bankers to threaten the confiscation of the union’s Clapham HQ.

Trains and lorries carried vast numbers of parcels throughout the strike, which, despite donations to the UPW, the NUR and TGWU did little or nothing to prevent. Local Government and Civil Service union members were allowed by their leaders to deliver mail between their departments.

All in all, if the strategic thinking of the UPW leadership was non-existent, and its tactics both timid and over-confident, it was the TUC and the trade union movement that deserves most of the blame, they clearly deserted the UPW in 1971, its unique time of great need. With creditors pressing, the UPW Executive lost its confidence, as suddenly as the strike had been called. Feelers were put out; the Post Office, sensing UPW surrender, ‘chivalrously’ agreed a binding Court of Inquiry into the dispute, and so, on March 3rd 1971, the UPW Executive, led by Jackson, put the union’s bureaucracy and bricks and mortar before its membership, and decided by 27 votes to 4 to call an immediate Branch Ballot for a return to work.

These meetings were held within 5 days, amid some accusations of undue haste: for example, Mount Pleasant meetings were always held on Sundays, yet many members awoke on that Sunday to find their branch meeting had already been called on the Saturday! Moreover, if a Branch of 2,000 members had voted to call the strike off by 1,100 votes to 900, under UPW Rules, all 2,000 votes were cast for ending the strike. The final vote, translated into actual membership figures, was 190,614 to 10,427.

UK Supreme Court says Uber drivers are not independent contractors

Uber's "gig economy" business model is under attack around the world.

by Timothy B. Lee in ars Technica- 2/19/2021, 5:14 PM

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has ruled that Uber drivers are legally workers, not self-employed contractors as Uber has argued in courts around the world. The ruling means that drivers in Britain and Northern Ireland are eligible for additional benefits and protections, including a minimum wage.

Uber claims that it merely acts as a technology provider and broker between independent drivers and their customers—much as eBay facilitates sales between buyers and sellers. In Uber's view, this means that it doesn't owe its drivers benefits like unemployment insurance, doesn't need to reimburse drivers for their costs, and isn't bound by minimum wage and overtime rules. Uber emphasizes that its drivers are free to decide when, where, and how much they work.

But critics point out that Uber exerts a lot more control over its drivers—and over the driver-passenger relationship—than a conventional platform like eBay or Airbnb. Uber sets fares, collects payments from customers, deducts its own fee, and remits the remainder to the driver. It requires drivers to accept a large majority of the rides they are offered. It handles customer complaints and kicks drivers off the platform if their average rating falls too low.

“A position of subordination and dependency”

So the UK Supreme Court ruled Friday that Uber drivers are legally Uber workers, not independent business owners who happen to get most of their business from Uber.

“Drivers are in a position of subordination and dependency in relation to Uber such that they have little or no ability to improve their economic position through professional or entrepreneurial skill,” said Lord George Leggatt, one of the justices of the Supreme Court, as he handed down the ruling.

One consequence is that Uber drivers must be paid at least the minimum wage. And importantly, the high court held that drivers must be paid not only for the time when they're driving but also for time they're logged in to the app waiting for another fare.

This could have significant implications for Uber's relationship to drivers. While drivers will presumably appreciate a minimum earnings guarantee, this could also mean that Uber will restrict when drivers are allowed to work—since having too many drivers online during periods of low demand could cost Uber more than it earns in fares.

According to the Financial Times, the ruling means Uber must set up a pension program for its drivers. Thousands of drivers could be eligible to sue for back pay as a result of the ruling.

A global battle

In recent years, Uber has been fighting over the same issue in jurisdictions around the world. California passed legislation in 2019 requiring Uber (and Lyft) to treat its drivers as employees. Uber and Lyft fought the law in court for the next year, delaying its implementation until voters overturned it in a November 2020 vote.

According to the Financial Times, UK law has three legal categories—employees, workers, and independent contractors. Workers in the UK have more rights than independent contractors, but not as many as employees. Employment law in the US generally just has two categories—employees and independent contractors.

Last year, France's top court ruled that Uber drivers must be treated as employees. Spanish courts reached a similar conclusion in September. Uber is facing a class-action lawsuit in Canada over the same issue.

Uber is also facing litigation in Massachusetts over the legal status of its drivers.

Of course, Uber may ultimately overturn some of these rulings in the courts or national legislatures, or through referenda. But it seems unlikely that Uber will prevail in all of these fights. Which means that unless Uber wants to abandon broad swaths of hard-won territory, it's going to have to figure out how to make its business model work while treating drivers as employees.

That might mean higher prices for consumers and less flexibility for the drivers. But advocates say that drivers will ultimately benefit from having the same legal protections as most other workers.

An appeal for help from workers in Ukraine

ALL over the world, working people are suffering due to the global pandemic and economic crisis. Many have lost their jobs. Many businesses are failing.

But not all these problems are being caused by Covid.

We've received an appeal for help from workers in Ukraine who have not received their wages for more than three YEARS.

And the business that employs them - KVARSYT - is state-owned.

According to Ukraine's constitution, every worker must be paid for their work.

The decision of the management to not pay these workers is also in breach of ILO Convention 95, entitled 'Protection of Wages'TRADE (1949), which was ratified in 1961 by the Ukrainian government.

Please take a moment to protest to the Ukrainian government - and to show your solidarity with these workers.

And please spread the word to your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you.

**************************************

Unite union leader condemns Starmer decision!

YESTERDAY the UNITE union general secretary, Len McCluskey said: “I am astonished at the decision to withdraw the Parliamentary Labour Party whip from Jeremy Corbyn.

“This is a vindictive and vengeful action which despoils Party democracy and due process alike, and amounts to overruling the unanimous decision of the NEC panel yesterday to readmit Jeremy to the Party.

“This action gives rise to double jeopardy in the handling of the case and shows marked bad faith.

“The unity of the Party around the need to implement the EHRC recommendations in full is being recklessly undermined.

“The continued persecution of Jeremy Corbyn, a politician who inspired millions, by a leadership capitulating to external pressure on Party procedures risks destroying the unity and integrity of the Labour Party.>

“I urge Keir Starmer in the strongest terms to pull back from the brink.”

**********************************************************

Unite is Britain and Ireland’s largest union with members working across all sectors of the economy. The general secretary is Len McCluskey.

Belarus: Release 42 trade unionists who were arrested this afternoon

A few days ago I wrote to give you the good news that four union leaders who had been jailed in Belarus were now free.

  

We know that our campaign helped.  They told us so in a video.

But this afternoon we received some terrible news: some of those very same union leaders, together with around 40 other union members, were arrested by the police and are now being held in a local police station.

They are likely to be held until Monday and possibly much longer.

The independent trade unions of Belarus and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have called for a global campaign of protest.

Please join us in sending an urgent message to the local and national police demanding their release.

 

Free the 42 jailed trade unionists now!

Thank you!

Please share this message with your friends, family and fellow trade union members.  Thank you!

Eric Lee ***********************************************************

A Gradely Book for Gradely Folk!

BOOK REVIEW by Christopher Draper

FOR anyone who imagines Sir Keir Starmer, a sharp-suited, Cambridge-educated lawyer and Knight of the Realm, is the embodiment of Socialism, Paul Salveson’s newly published evocation of the writings and cultural milieu of a pioneering Bolton socialist will prove a revelation.

“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” celebrates, revisits and re-enacts a classic text (“Moorland & Memories”) published a century ago by Allen Clarke (1863-1935), an astonishingly prolific and wide-ranging radical journalist familiar to his contemporaries as the proprietor, editor and chief writer of such popular Northern newspapers as, “Teddy Ashton’s Journal – a Gradely Paper for Gradely Folk”. Clarke wrote poetry, short stories, social and political commentaries and philosophical essays. Although he was an exceptional talent, the popularity of Clarke’s writings with working folk is indicative of the vivacity and cultural diversity of the North’s pioneering socialist and labour movement before it fell beneath the wheels of electioneering and concentrated on getting careerists and snake oil salesmen into Parliament.

Salveson describes Clarke’s politics as, “Libertarian Socialist” but notes that “quite a big part of him leant towards anarchism of the non-violent Tolstoyan sort”. That’s how I first came across Clarke, whilst researching the street-level origins of British anarchism and John Tamlyn, a Burnley-based libertarian whose stories were published in “Teddy Ashton’s Journal”. Much of this very warp and weft of the everyday lives, political networks and cultural milieu of pioneering Northern socialists is still missed by London-centric historians and ivory-towered academics. In contrast Salveson digs down into his home turf and maintains living links with the people, places and politics he writes about. Through a hundred and eighty pages and twenty-eight profusely illustrated chapters, “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” meanders around Clarke’s Lancashire homeland on foot, by bike and rail, teasing out the many and varied threads running through Clarke’s original 1920 volume. (If only Salveson had included an index readers would be spared page-turning meanderings in attempting to locate particular topics!).

Firstly we get an introduction to the man himself. Clarke was the son of cotton workers and he joined them as a “little piecer” employed in the mill when he was only eleven but the family were far from passive, ignorant victims of poverty. His father was a union activist, blacklisted for his beliefs and the family were avid readers interested in a range of intellectual topics. Appalled by the working conditions he experienced in the factories Allen turned to writing. Employed as a journalist by a series of Northern newspapers he also experimented as a newspaper proprietor and with publication of “Teddy Ashton’s Journal” hit upon a winning formula, which at its peak in the 1890’s attracted a readership of 50,000 every week.

The paper’s letters column, bulging with missives from weavers, minders and railwaymen, shows his readership was overwhelmingly working class. Clarke considered himself part of that great Northern industrial working class and his stories, both serious and comic, featured ordinary people’s lives in the mills, weaving sheds and mines. His political vision, though, extended way beyond the factories he thought so damaged the beloved landscape as well as workers lives. He delighted in nature and the wild places of the North. Salveson clearly shares Clarke’s wider vision of how socialism should and can offer so much more than higher wages and in tracing the threads of Clarke’s writings Salveson re-enacts some of Clarke’s original geographical and philosophical rambles.

Tolstoy, Gandhi, Whitman, Edward Carpenter and Michael Davitt all appear in “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” as well as trams, windmills and steam engines. Besides the richness of detailed local history perhaps the ultimate value of this book is as a model and inspiration to readers to dig into their own home turf and rediscover the rich radical networks of mutual aid that thrived before our political vision grew dim. As Clarke recalled in “Teddy Ashton’s Lancashire Annual (1908)”:

“I remember Pendle,

Where in days gone by

Crowds of comrades gathered

‘Neath the moor top sky;

Oh the friendly greetings,

When our hearts were jolly bowls

With fellowship o’er flowing,

And the vision in our souls!”

(“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” – priced £21 – is available at all good bookshops and WH Smith, or direct from the author at paul.salveson@myphone.coop)

Unite launches campaign to stop Go Ahead Group

using COVID 19 as cover to slash pay and conditions

UNITE, Britain's biggest union, has launched an international campaign to stop the owners of the Manchester bus company Go North West from using Covid 19 as cover for making savage cuts to bus drivers' pay and conditions, while victimising and gagging a Unite union representative.

Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey has written to Go Ahead Group's CEO David Brown to warn him that Unite will be using all available resources to provide "immediate assistance to our members".

"In addition to industrial action this will mean exposing your company’s behaviour to all of your stakeholders, partners and associates. This will include mobilising all of our allies and contacting our significant political network in the Nordic countries, Germany and Australasia."

Despite continuing to make millions in profits, Go North West's parent company, Go-Ahead is trying to use COVID 19 as cover to make savage cuts to bus drivers' pay, terms and conditions in Manchester. The company is intending to ‘fire’ the entire workforce to get what they want and then ‘rehire’ those that agree to accept inferior contracts. At the same time management is trying to ‘gag’ and sack Colin, a Union Rep who refused to agree the company’s demands.

Unite is calling on the company to stop 'fire & rehire’, stop the bullying and stop the cuts and enter into constructive negotiations with the drivers' union Unite. The drivers are currently being consulted on industrial action.

The company is demanding that drivers accept cuts to terms and conditions, including changes to their scheduling agreement that will cost each driver £3,500 per year on average, an unpaid increase in working hours and slashing sick pay arrangements. But Go Ahead PLC is a profitable company. The company expects its overall operating profit for the year ending June 27 2020 to be between £63m to £75m. There is no need to cut the pay and conditions of workers. This is being done out of greed - purely to increase profit.

After refusing to sign away the terms and conditions of his members, union Rep Colin, is being threatened with the sack on trumped up charges. As the only union Rep not ‘furloughed’, Colin was singled out and repeatedly, bullied by senior managers who wanted him to agree cuts without talking to his members. As part of Colin’s suspension notice the company included a ‘gagging order’, banning him from speaking to anyone who worked for Go Ahead including family members.

Unite executive officer, Sharon Graham said: "Despite continuing to make millions in profits, Go head are trying to use COVID 19 to ‘fire and rehire’ their drivers and make savage cuts to pay, terms and conditions in Manchester. The company has targeted, bullied and victimised our union rep to try to bulldoze through its plans. This is the tip of the iceberg. If Go Ahead get away with this in Manchester they will try and roll-out ‘fire and rehire’ elsewhere. Unite will not allow bad employers to use COVID 19 to attack their workforce.

"Go North West's managing director Nigel Featham has put the company on course for an unnecessary conflict. His actions could lead to lasting damage to the reputation of Go Ahead both throughout this country and overseas. Our message to the company is fair and simple - drop the disciplinary action against our union representative, drop your ‘fire & rehire’ threat and get around the negotiating table. Unite will not let profitable firms like Go Ahead use the pandemic as cover for cuts.”

For more information contact Ciaran Naidoo 07768 931 315

Twitter: @unitetheunion Facebook: unitetheunion1 Web: unitetheunion.org

Unite is Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union with members working across all sectors of the economy. The general secretary is Len McCluskey.

Belarus: Stop the violence - defend democracy

Presidential elections were held in Belarus on August 9. They were once again blatantly falsified in favour of the long-serving ruler Lukashenko. This caused a storm of popular protest.

The security forces responded with an unprecedented terror: mass arrests, beatings and torture of protesters.

A wave of spontaneous work stoppages swept across the country. Workers started to form strike committees to prepare for a nationwide general strike in support of democratic change. The strikers demands include: recognise the results of the presidential elections as invalid, release all political prisoners and demonstrators, prevent the persecution of the strike participants and cancel the system of short term contracts.

The administration and security services are putting tremendous pressure on the strikers, members of the strike committee and their families. Many are threatened with dismissal. Activists are being detained by security services.

We must help stop the wave of violence.

Please support the online campaign supported by independent trade unions in Belarus and global unions, here:

https://www.labourstart.org/go/stoptheviolence

And please - share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

Pride & Prejudiced against Shrewsbury Pickets

Ricky Tomlinson’s criminal convictions to be re-examined

Appeal court to look again at case of Royle Family actor after claims he may have been unjustly jailed

Rob Evans

@robevansgdn

Tue 26 May 2020 16.19 BST

THIS WEEK, the Guardian reported that:
Documents discovered in the national archives have shown that a covert Whitehall unit had a “discreet but considerable hand” in the programme by supplying its makers with a large dossier about allegedly leftwing trade unionists.

The criminal convictions of actor Ricky Tomlinson, who starred in the TV comedy the Royle Family, are to be re-examined by appeal court judges after an official body suggested he may have been unjustly jailed.

Tomlinson and other trade unionists have been campaigning for years to clear their names after they were jailed during a strike in the 1970s.  On Tuesday, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the public body that scrutinises alleged miscarriages of justice, announced it had asked the court of appeal to review the cases of Tomlinson and others.

Tomlinson, 80, said it was “good news” and an opportunity to prove that he and 23 other men – known as the Shrewsbury 24 – were prosecuted in what amounted to a politically motivated attack on the trade union movement by the government, police and managers.  He worked as a plasterer in the construction industry before becoming well-known as as an actor in films such as Raining Stones and Riff-Raff.Tomlinson, was jailed in 1973 for two years during a strike after he was convicted of conspiring to intimidate and affray.  He had taken part in the first national building workers’ strike in 1972 to improve wages and safety regimes on sites.  Months after the strike ended, 24 trade unionists were arrested and prosecuted for offences including unlawful assembly, conspiracy to intimidate, affray and threatening behaviour while picketing.  After a series of three trials at Shrewsbury crown court in Shropshire, they were convicted of sentences ranging from three years 'to three months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.  For years, campaigners under the banner of the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign have been gathering evidence seeking to clear the names of those convicted, who believed that they were persecuted in an attempt to suppress trade unionists at a time of increasing workers’ militancy.  The review body’s new decision means that it has to date asked the appeal court to re-examine the cases of 14 of those convicted, having investigated their claims: along with the six referred on Tuesday, eight had been referred in March.

Why can't we know the truth about a strike that happened 40 years ago? | Ricky Tomlinson

 

The CCRC initially refused to send the cases to the court of appeal but changed its decision after a legal challenge by some of the trade unionists.  Helen Pitcher, the CCRC’s chairman, acknowledged: ”Some will think this has not been the commission’s finest hour. ”  The CCRC said its decision was based on fresh evidence arising from a 1973 note that showed that some original statements had been destroyed.  The commission said this had not been shown to the lawyers defending the men at their original trial.  The CCRC also highlighted a television documentary, Red under the Bed, about leftwing trade unionists, which was broadcast during the first trial in 1972.  Lawyers for defendants had unsuccessfully argued at the trial that the documentary had unfairly influenced the jury.Documents discovered in the national archives have shown that a covert Whitehall unit had a “discreet but considerable hand” in the programme by supplying its makers with a large dossier about allegedly leftwing trade unionists.A Whitehall official noted what he called “a good effort” by the Information Research Department, the Foreign Office unit that had been set up during the cold war to produce anti-communist propaganda abroad.After Tomlinson was convicted, he was blacklisted and struggled to land work. He became an actor and got his break in the 1980s when he played Bobby Grant in the Channel 4 drama Brookside.• This article was amended on 28 May 2020 to include a breakdown of the 14 cases so far referred to the CCRC, and to explain the role of the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign in gathering evidence.

Appeal

The Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC) has ruled that the Court of Appeal should re-examine the criminal convictions imposed on several of the striking workers, including Tomlinson, who took part in the picket.  That decision by the CCRC was based on new evidence that indicated crucial statements had been destroyed, and of the “way in which the airing of the documentary was handled by the trial judge”.

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José Netto Gibraltarian syndicalist & Jack Jones

José Netto at the Casa de la Memoria in Jimena de la Frontera

by Brian Bamford

Editorial note:  I first met José Netto in 
March 1964, when I, my wife and baby 
6-month-old son (born in Denia, Alicante
had to leave Spain where we had been living 
and working for 12 month, and crossed the 
frontier in order to to comply with the then 
Spanish law. 

We had a 'letter of introduction' when we 
arrived at his council house in a working-
class area on the Rock.  He was living with 
his own young family and then worked on the 
tools in the Her Majesties Dockyard, but being 
an anarcho-syndicalist who had joined the 
then Syndicalist Worker's Federation 
while working in London in the 1950s.  
He and his mates helped to find me a job 
working as an electrician at the airport for
the Ministry of Defence repairing the landing 
lights on the airstrip.

One of José's close mates was Navarro, who was an 
anarchist supporter of the CNT, and had fought
for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War in
following the military insurrection in July 1936.  

Although José was an anarcho-syndicalist in Gibraltar
the syndicalists were not sectarian and had close working
relations with historic labour leaders like Albert Risso*, 
who became the first president of the Gibraltar Confederation 
of Labour which, in 1963, merged with the  
Transport and General Workers' Union, now Unite.



* Albert Risso was one of the first political activists in the British territory of Gibraltar. at a very young age, he was one of the campaigners for the involvement of the Gibraltarian civilian population (and especially its working class) in governing the colony. In 1919, he was one of the members of a so-called "deputation of working men" who went to London to meet the Secretary of State for the Colonies and ask for the creation of a representative body that could succeed the Sanitary Commission, an unelected body whose members, usually belonging to the upper class, were nominated by the Governor. The campaign, driven by the trade unions, brought about the creation of the Gibraltar City Council in 1921.^{[2] 
By the start of World War II,[1] Risso was a foreman mechanic and a City Council employee. When most of Gibraltar's civilian population was evacuated, Risso was one of the few Gibraltarians that remained on The Rock.
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José Netto, the historic syndicalist anarchist trade union leader in Gibraltar in the last half of the 20th Century, visited the Casa de la Memoria in Jimena de la Frontera (Cádiz), on the 28th, January 2019, a few months after the donation of a library of this entidad of five volumes of the encyclopedia El hombre y la Tierra, a history of humanity written by Eliseo Reclus in 1905.  Reclus was a French scientist and creator of the Geografía Social, being one of the first theoreticians of anarchism and a man of action who participated in the Paris Commune, together with other famous historic activists.

These five volumes of El hombre y la tierra were edited in Barcelona en 1933. The translation is by Anselmo Lorenzo, the principle great leader of Spanish anarchism and its representative in the First International.

These volumes form part of the particular library of José Netto, and they were offered up from the hands of a syndicalist of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) when the Campo de Gibraltar had suffered in 1936, and  Spaniards in the area had struggled with death at the hands of the military coup that rose against the Second Republic.

José Netto received the books from a man who had been an exile since the 1950s and a few days after learning that that anarchist had committed suicide. The donation to the Casa de la Memoria was effected months later during the last session of the seminar of the Cursos de Verano de la Universidad de Cádiz in San Roque, the son of José Netto, Michael Netto, in Gibraltar, and was received by the President of the Foro for the Memoria del Campo de Gibraltar, Andrés Rebolledo, to deposit in the Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda.

In his visit to the Casa, José Netto, who now lives in Atajate (Málaga), had also donated two poster images of the Second Spanish Republic. 

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The donación to the Casa de la Memoria took effect during the last session of the seminar

la efectuó meses atrás, durante la última sesión del seminario de memoria histórica de los Cursos de Verano de la Universidad de Cádiz en San Roque, the son of José Netto, Michael Netto, in Gibraltar, and was received by the President of the Foro for the Memoria del Campo de Gibraltar, Andrés Rebolledo, to deposit in the Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda.

El histórico sindicalista de Gibraltar José Netto visita la Casa de la Memoria tras donar a la Biblioteca la enciclopedia de Eliseo Reclus

14/02/2019

Biblioteca para la Memoria, Libro de la semana

José Netto wrote the following obituary for Jack Jones of the T&G:

My relation with Jack stretches back to the late 60s early 70s when I was appointed District Officer in 1972, and he was the TGWU General Secretary.  He has always been my mentor, as we shared common ideology, and has been a tremendous influence in my professional development as a trade unionist.  He was responsible for financing the construction of our premises in Town Range, which at the beginning we used to call?  La Casa del Pueblo?  He played a very leading role in supporting our fight for parity of wages and salaries, against the MOD.  As the British and local government had rejected this claim, on the grounds that it could not be sustained economically, a fact that was later proved wrong.

The intention of the fascist forces in Spain, during the Franco regime, to strangle the economy, with its restrictions and the closure of the land frontier, was defeated by the contribution of the labour movement in Gibraltar, of which I feel very proud of.

I wish to pay tribute on behalf of the working class of Gibraltar, to this comrade, so that we never forget how much we owe to him.

Rest in peace, Bro. Jack.

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