I have today received my certificate and badge as an honorary life member of UNISON. Diligent readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) may recollect my having been awarded this honour at the close of last year's National Delegate Conference. There is, of course, however, many a slip twixt cup and lip, so it has taken a few months for the matter to be finalised. I won't repeat the thanks I gave in June when originally notified of the decision of UNISON's lay leadership to grant my honorary life membership, although I remain very grateful to my comrades on the UNISON NEC, and also to the U ..read more

I am indebted to a recent reader of this blog for kindly reminding me of an event which took place last month at UNISON's national LGBT+ conference. My old friend, and Lambeth UNISON branch comrade, Jackie Lewis received a well deserved award for lifetime achievement as a trade union activist. The national trade union rightly recognised Jackie’s decades of pioneering commitment to lesbian and gay (latterly LGBT+) self organisation in the labour movement and to building solidarity with the Palestinian people (it was Jackie who took the case to the Supreme Court to permit local government pens ..read more

A UNISON NEC member (and past President of the Union), has successfully bought a complaint against UNISON to the Certification Officer. Whether or not one agrees with the action taken in the particular case, it is important to recognise and salute the courage required on the part of an individual to take such a case against one's own union. Although the Certification Officer carries out a role that has existed for more than 100 years, it is true that their role in considering complaints from trade union members has its origins in the anti-union laws of the Thatcher Government. Therefore, tho ..read more

On a day when news is breaking about strike action by nurses, civil servants, rail workers and Scottish teachers, if you heard that senior officials of two of the four largest trade unions affiliated to the TUC were meeting together under the auspices of the TUC you might think that it was to discuss coordinating action to defend the living standards of their members. (This would, of course indicate a certain optimism about the attitude of the TUC to its role given recent experience). In fact today's meeting is to discuss a complaint made by UNISON against the National education union (NEU ..read more

UNISON’s National Disabled Members Conference is in Brighton this weekend. As you might imagine, the large number of UNISON activists will be debating numerous motions addressing the interests of our many disabled members (among whom I suppose I should probably now count myself). However, supporters of UNISON's Ancien Regime have predictably seized the opportunity to try to provoke something of a faction fight. One of the members of the recalcitrant minority on our NEC, and a former President of our trade union, took to Twitter to express her excitement about an emergency motion which had t ..read more

In Belgium this week NATO will be testing and exercising its procedures with regard to the dropping of nuclear bombs.  Fighter-jets from at least ten NATO nations will carry out flights and exercises from the air force base at Kleine Brogel in Limburg. The exercise, titled "Steadfast Noon" is intended to familiarise pilots and crews with the techniques involved in the possible use of nuclear weapons.  The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) have recently, and rightly, pointed out that Russia’s recent threats to use nuclear weapons in the context of th ..read more

As a Labour movement activist in Lambeth in the late 80s, I remember the controversy around the party's shameful refusal to permit a Black candidate to contest the Vauxhall by-election in 1989. This condemned the electorate of a safe Labour seat in the centre of London to three decades of representation by a Member of Parliament noted for her support for foxhunting, Ulster Unionism and Brexit. Given our “first past the post” electoral system and the two-party system which exists in symbiosis with it, the selection of Labour’s candidate in some inner-city constituencies, many of which have lar ..read more

The Forde report may have been all but ignored by the hierarchy of our party (try searching the party website for the word Forde), but those of us who are committed to a Labour Party which represents the interests of the people the Party was established to serve need to be more attentive. For those whose idea of politics is that it consists of what goes on in the Westminster bubble, including Party HQ on Southside and the office of the Leader of the Opposition, Forde was awaited for two years for what it would tell us about who said what to whom about disciplinary action within the party an ..read more

The Labour Party is enjoying a lead in the opinion polls which is unprecedented this century. Whilst strong supporters of the current leadership will see this as the product of what was, in their terms, a successful Party Conference, it seems more likely that the economic chaos created by the Truss government is at least as important. Opinion polls have put Labour consistently ahead of the Tories this year. This is a significant improvement on this time last year when Johnson's Government were ahead of the opposition in the polls, and the latest poll gives us the largest lead we have had sinc ..read more

On the day that Black members of the Labour Party were due to hold a protest outside Conference this afternoon about the failure of the Party to acknowledge the findings of the Forde report in respect of allegations six, the Party finally published online an apology from our National Executive Committee (NEC). The first sentence of the apology sums it up really well; "The Labour Party apologises for the culture and attitudes expressed by senior staff in the leaked report, as well as for the way in which those comments came to light.” In other words; "we are sorry that some of our senior sta ..read more