A voice for social work in poetry?

John Stevenson reviews 'Dancing With Big Eunice - Missives from the frontline of a fractured society" by Alistair Findlay

In a world of guideline after guideline, key performance indicators, inspections and media savagery, social work these days can seem so distant from the human relationships that should be central to the job.

Then along came poetry.

Poetry?

Goldberg: I now have a million brothers and sisters - comrades too I hope..

It is always hard to write a report of Denis Goldberg speaking. You can rush at it in the height of the emotion or you can wait a bit and analyse. We've waited a bit.

There must be something that has half of the Scotland delegation at UNISON Conference 20101 unashamedly in tears. What is it?

Is it the straightforward honesty we treasure in Scotland, although we tend to approach it with a tad more bluntness?

Is it the knowledge that you are listening to someone who has given more to the cause than any of us will ever know?

Go back to your branches and organise for the fightback

UNISON Conference 2010: You get Conferences that inspire. Conferences that divide with destructive quasi-political infighting. And you get 2010.

A quiet and serious resolve characterised the contributions and responses as almost 3,000 delegates set out a range of strategies to prepare for the biggest attacks we have ever seen on our services, our pensions, our pay, our health and safety and our hard won rights and equalities.

It was time to get down to work and organising is the key.

Local government funding

UNISON Conference 2010: We are talking about services here Conference. Services relied on by people. People who pay their general tax, their council tax and are now paying higher charges on top to buy the services they need. 

Because that’s what happens when you freeze the Council Tax.

Flawed though it is, it is far fairer than forcing those in most need to pay the most in charges.

In Edinburgh, day care charges for 1500 pensioners almost doubled a few weeks ago.

NHS loses 4000 jobs as bankers get bonus for making a loss!

Tom Waterson

The NHS in Scotland is facing 4,000 job cuts as the SNP government plans a £270million cut in spending following a tight budget settlement earlier this year. And even further cuts are expected after the Westminster ConDem ‘emergency budget’ on 22 June with knock-on effects in Scotland over the next few years.

The Scottish Government has promised there will be no compulsory redundancies and have agreed a partnership group with the unions to scrutinise workforce plans, but that still leaves major concerns about and jobs and services.

Our City's Not For Sale

May Day 2010 Edinburgh, being the speaker after the comedian! Many years ago I was a semi-pro magician, believe it or not, and one of the key showbiz maxims was ‘never follow a comedian’. All those years and I’ve never learned. Mind you, there’s a lot of not-learning around as we run up to this election.

Workers Memorial Day Edinburgh

70% of workplace accidents are due to poor management of health and safety. This means deaths at work are avoidable. But the alarming cuts in public spending which all the main parties have been proposing can only result in more danger for people at work. 

At a time when business and other vested interests are campaigning for proper health and safety laws to be replaced by deregulation, with companies being allowed to carry out their own health & safety audits, trade unions need to ensure that these hard-fought for rights are not eroded when employers campaign against red tape.

In support of free music tuition in schools

STUC 2010: I thought a good way of demonstrating the importance of free music tuition in schools would have been to start off giving you a few bars on my trumpet – an instrument I almost learned to play at school. But then I thought it might not be the best advert for the service.

But that in fact is the point. You don’t have to be great at a musical instrument to gain all the enjoyment and benefits.

Edinburgh takes to streets to isolate Nazis

Thousands of people demonstrated in Edinburgh today peacefully under the 'Scotland United' banner to further humiliate the so-called English/Scottish Defence League's attempt to bring its message of hate to the city. While demonstrators from trade unions, faith groups, students and ordinary members of the public staged a peaceful protest through the city centre, less than 100 fascists were corralled in pubs by the police and sent home again humiliated, as they were in Glasgow in November.

On leaving Springwell House

Event to mark the children and families social work team leaving Springwell House Edinburgh: The lessons learned through the experience of a man of my age are twofold.

The first is that there is a time to stop wearing light coloured trousers.

The second is that reorganisations always come just when you are getting the current system right.

The chances are that the next reorganisation will come up with the novel idea of locally based generic social work teams, and we’ll all be back at Springwell again.

Burns: Revolutionary, internationalist, lover and poet

On a visit to a hospital the Prince of Wales goes up to a bed and asks the patient how he’s doing. The patient whispers “We sleekit cowerin, timourous beastie”. At the next bed, the patient answers, “A man’s a man for a’ that”. Puzzled, the Prince of Wales moves on to the next bed and the patient says, “My luve is like a red red rose”.

The royal visitor then asks the nurse “What’s going on? - “It’s the Burns unit sir”, she says.

Such is the fame of Robert Burns that people get that joke all across the English speaking world – and further.

As election looms can we remember how bad it was before?

As the run-up to a General Election approaches, the temptation might be to say ‘a plague on all their houses’ but the risks for public service workers are too great to just stand on the sidelines. http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/oct09/10.html 

Scotland in UNISON has focussed on pensions recently for the simple reason that Tory leaders have been explicit that final salary schemes will go. So there’s at least one reason why public service workers should start thinking about the election. 

Make dual political strategy work for us

Come the elections, we have to face some very hard facts. And one of them is that, without dramatic action, the Tories seem on course to gain power with all that would mean for the destruction of public services, pensions and just about everything else – along with an NHS even more privatised than the worst of any of the current plans. http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-can-unisons-political-fund-be-more_13.html

Practical strategies to defend and invest in public services to bring us out of recession

UNISON Conference 2009: It was a Conference that took itself seriously. Most of the time.  

Detailed and practical strategies to defend public services and invest in them to lift us out of the recession took centre stage.

An inspiring call to take the movement forward from American trade unionist Tom Woodruff enthused Conference as we went on to launch a programme for action around ‘a million voices for change’.

MayDay Address: Night for Gaza – Newtongrange Miners Club 1 May 2009

National Mining Museum Newtongrange

From medieval times, Mayday was a big celebration in Britain – not for the unions at the time, mind you – more a pagan festival, that got more and more rowdy. http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/news/2009/0105.html  

So rowdy that the Government stopped celebrations in 1708 after writer Ned Ward wrote that he was shocked to find comedy booths and prostitutes doing ‘good business’.

Perhaps then, it was no coincidence that the 2002 London Mayday rally fell apart in disarray after a surprise demo by 300 sex workers.

Asylum and Human Trafficking

STUC 2009: Along with a range of organisations we have been campaigning for several years for all children in Scotland to have the same rights and protection under the Children Scotland Act.

That glowing beacon of legislation makes the interests of all children paramount. It doesn’t differentiate between those with a passport and those without one. It was meant to protect all children.

But, as the Glasgow Girls showed us, the reality was that displaced children were second class children and their welfare was regularly undermined.

Edinburgh fights cuts and redundancies

Almost 8,000 UNISON members delivering services for the City of Edinburgh Council walked out on strike on Thursday 23 August against cuts and redundancies. Selective action and boycotts were set to follow. http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/sept07/1.html

As SiU went to print, last minute talks were being held to avert further action, with the branch demanding assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies and no extra pressures on staff due to budget cuts of over £10 million.

Brighton 2007: Fundamental decisions, so why was it so boring?

UNISON Conference 2007: A straw poll suggests many delegates found the rules afternoon the most exciting of the week. Now that just about says it all.

How could a Conference that made fundamental decisions about a co-ordinated fight for pay, a trade union wide fight against privatisation and decisded key policies on pensions seem so dull?

Say no to Trident

Moving motion at 2007 UNISON Conference on behalf of City of Edinburgh, Scotland, Lanarkshire Health, the NEC, St Mary’s Paddington and York City: As long ago as 1996 some of the judges on the International Court of Justice concluded that the use of nuclear weapons was inadmissible in any circumstances.

That is our position in UNISON.

Longer ago in 1976, the Vatican told the UN – “The arms race can kill – though the weapons themselves may never be used – by their cost alone armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.

Dawn raids slammed as UNISON issues guidance on asylum seeker children

UNISON and the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) have launched a guidance booklet for social workers in Scotland. It advises on ethical practice for social work staff dealing with asylum-seeker children. http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/oct06/22.html

A commitment was made by the UK Immigration Minister back in March to ensure that asylum-seekers' children would be assessed and each would have a lead professional appointed. In addition immigration staff dealing with children would have to have enhanced disclosure checks. These commitments have not yet been implemented, but UNISON is exerting more pressure following a spate of recent 'dawn raids' by immigration officials outwith the agreed protocol.