Leadership and South Africa beyond Marikana

It’s one thing winning the revolution. It is another thing implementing its vision. That was the theme of veteran ANC activist Denis Goldberg at a meeting of ACTSA Scotland in Glasgow on Tuesday.
Billed as a speech about the Marikana massacre, it turned into a disarmingly honest and at times painful analysis of the challenges of building a fair and just South Africa in just 18 years after centuries of constitutional oppression.

Denis’s right to do that comes with provenance. Twenty two years in jail for fighting apartheid wins you that privilege. But that analysis is also a prerequisite to understanding Marikana.

Equal Pay Victory: Behind the Headlines

Equal pay hit the headlines big style last week culminating in Friday’s announcement that UNISON had won a settlement for 3,000 workers in Edinburgh. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/
news/content/view/full/125431

As UNISON Scotland mounts an autumn recruitment campaign, what better advert is there for being a member of a union? But amidst the celebrations, it is worth taking a look at the years of work behind the headlines that brought a deal for these mainly low-paid women.

Organising for a future that works

Stephanie Herd

Organising to break the pay freeze, organising to protect our NHS and our public services and organising to turn back the vicious impact of ConDem policies on our members, on the poorest in society, on the disabled, elderly and our children. A daunting list of tasks but one UNISON’s National Conference was up for.
 

This year's conference was all about equality and social justice. It was about communicating, organising, campaigning to get our message to our members, prospective members and to the public at large. There is an alternative!

Neville Lawrence: ‘'UNISON has stayed with us'

Interview with Neville Lawrence before his moving speech to UNISON Conference on 21/6/12:
It's a question you dread asking Neville Lawrence. He must have been asked it a million times yet he answered with the thoughtful respect and honesty we've come to know over an inspirational and dignified 18 year campaign.
It is horrific enough for a parent to lose a child. To lose a child in the circumstances in which he lost Stephen is unthinkable. What keeps him going?

"To be honest, I don't know", said Neville. "When I came to this country I had the belief that if you were in trouble you would be helped... It was wrong that something can happen like this just because of the colour of someone's skin."

Celebrating 'Our City's Not For Sale'

May Day 2012 Rally speech from John Stevenson, UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch President.
Last year, and the year before, we came here saying ‘Our City’s Not For Sale’. Then it was an aspiration, now it’s a reality. We won. You won. But most of all we won together.

Adventures of an activist called Tom

Michael McGahey

As STUC Congress approaches I always reflect on the characters of the past and the bits of fun I remember in or around the movement over the years. So sit back and enjoy some unashamed name-dropping from a back-office publicist who happened to be in the right place at the right time – from time to time.
Not strictly the STUC but let's start with the biggest first. 1993, Glasgow, pissing rain. Thousands welcome Nelson Mandela. A chance meeting with Lothian Region convener Keith Geddes and UNISON general secretary Alan Jinkinson led to me being in the line-up to meet Mandela. I was in a red nylon hoodie and soaked to the skin.

I’ll never forget Mandela’s moving words, full of political significance, as he shook my hand. “You are very wet”, he said.

Vote of thanks: Mike Kirby STUC President 2012

What can we say about Mike Kirby?

Or as we affectionately know him in UNISON – The Prince of Darkness.

The STUC must be the only organisation that has the namesake of a Japanese Anime cartoon character as its President. I quote from Wikipaedia...

Reclaiming the referendum

Gordon Mckay

We need to recognise the "Scottish or British?" debate as the blind alley it is. Instead we should be articulating the Scotland we want to see, writes UNISON Scotland NEC member Gordon Mckay in the Morning Star on the day UNISON’s Scottish Council ran workshops on that very issue. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/117784 

UNISON’s role in the constitutional convention that created devolution and the Scottish Parliament was significant. It is also significant that it was a Parliament that was created and not an ‘assembly’. A settlement where everything was devolved except for key reserved powers, rather than the other way around.

Scottish Labour – redefining core values?

The weekend’s Scottish Labour Conference heard UNISON seek to redefine the party’s focus onto the basic issues of unfairness and inequality, somehow lost in the normal anodyne New Labour media-speak.