a Sad Day for democracy

Earlier this week democracy in my Union took a backward step as a disciplinary panel opted to suspend four UNISON activists from holding office for three years. Their "crime" was to publish a leaflet at Unison's Conference of 2007 (yes UNISON takes Even longer to resolve disciplinary issues than the average Employer)

The leaflet was deemed to be considered capable of causing offence and questioned the decision making process of the standing orders committee thus questioning their reasoning for ruling motions out of order. I think the latter may once have been described as "deliberately farting in your general direction" or similar.

The content used the old Chinese proverb of three wise monkeys, in these circumstances it was very unfortunate that the Chair of the SOC is a black man and the image may have well be considered offensive by some. But then after this event UNISON officials sent a gorilla handing out peanuts and bananas to the Employers organisation under the slogan broadly speaking of "pay peanuts and you get monkeys" Bare in mind in many Boroughs the Employees are overwhelmingly Black (like my own for example) and that many Councillors are also Black then this image could be viewed in a similar capacity. So did any Senior Employed official get disciplined? Did the Committee authorising this get investigated (assuming one did) So far as I Can tell the answer is a resounding no. If I am wrong on this then on provision of evidence I will be happy to publish a retraction on this point.

Then there is the case of "and then there were four": Four Branches produced the leaflet and initially investigated were Four Branch Secretaries of the branches and One Branch Chair (Itself a bit odd) But when the charges came one of the Branch Secretaries disappeared. I am sure it was mere coincidence that he was not a member of the Socialist Party of England and Wales (which the other four are well known members of)

I am not going to profess to be in agreement with the politics of the SP (E&W) being a member of the Labour Party. But I respect their rights to belong to a political party and to argue their case in our union for policies in keeping with their beliefs. That is a fundamental concept of democratic participation that we all have our right to argue for an alternative approach with the obvious exception of fascists and their ilk

So where does this leave us in the future? While we face attacks on our membership by the Employers (Labour, Conservative, Lid Dem, SNP and the rest), privatisation, pensions threats, cuts on a massive scale and the rest, we are more interested in attacking our own over something for which they were willing to offer an apology for at the same Conference where the leaflet was published.

So at a time when we are desperately trying to recruit new members and activists we suspend four experienced and dedicated activists from holding office who are memebrs of a particular political party.The message many will read if your are anti Labour you are not welcome. I have had the good fortune to work with Glen Kelly and Onay Kasab and Brian Debus many times (less so Susan Moonagh) in London. While we have not always agreed on tactics I have never had cause to doubt their anti racist belief (in fact to the contrary)nor their commitment to the Trade union movement.

It's not to late for UNISON do the right thing chuck out this sanction at the appeal send a message of protest to Dave Prentis and help end this farce (particularly if you are UNISON member)

For updates and more information take a momemnt to look up http://www.stopthewitchhunt.org.uk