Social work on the brink

This first appeared in the Morning Star on 15/3/16: My name is John and I’m a social worker. There I’ve said it. After all it is World Social Work Day (15 March).

It used to be that when you were asked about your job, you would say ‘I work for the council’. It’s perhaps a reaction to the false media portrayal of council staff as a pile of lazy pen-pushers that more colleagues are now proudly confessing their social work identity.

That’s the problem when you are trying to defend local services. People don’t always know the range of essential services councils provide. When they actually need one of those services, they find resources are cut to the bone.

 

 

Unionist and Nationalist labels stifling Left or Right debate in Scotland

I am bravely going to carry on eating the occasional Tunnocks tea cake. I know. I have no moral fibre. On the other hand I have tried to avoid using Stagecoach buses because of their predatory practices and their homophobic founder (and SNP bankroller), and I have had some success.

But I have failed miserably in refusing to watch the fitba on Sky despite Alex Salmond’s cosiness with Rupert Murdoch (oh, and Murdoch’s dislike for unions, democracy and all that namby-pamby liberal nonsense). I still recklessly watch Bond movies despite the fact that Shir Sean was born just along the road from me and backs independence for a country he doesn’t want to live in. I even speak to (and occasionally accept drinks from) my mates who unfathomably voted Yes in the referendum.

Austerity and Social Work

Presentation to Edinburgh Local Practitioner Forum 26 November 2015.
I want to focus on three main challenges that austerity brings to social work and social workers.
1. Poverty and demonisation of the poor.
2. The role and effect of social work, especially in local government
3. Resources - facing the reality. How do we do the best with what we've got?

1. Poverty /demonisation of the poor

There is a deliberate strategy to portray those in need as less deserving so services are not needed - or they become punitive rather than enabling.
Austerity - who is really affected?

Even Leaner Times To Come For Poor Scots

First published in the Morning Star: Unions and community groups are gearing up for twin demonstrations in Edinburgh and Glasgow on October 29 against another savage round of council cuts.

Glasgow faces cuts of £103 million and 3,000 jobs over two years. This follows cuts of £250m and 4,000 jobs lost since 2010, hitting learning disability and mental health services, home care, supported education for children, community work, cleaning, library services and voluntary organisations.

Job lost is service lost to Edinburgh's citizens

First published in the Evening News 21/9/15: It would be a shame to be in conflict with the Edinburgh councillors who spoke out passionately last week against the government’s vindictive attack on individual freedoms and trade union rights.

But conflict looks inevitable as thousands of staff face losing their livelihoods with all that means for their families. As a union we have one key power to defend them – the strength of people standing together. If it comes to compulsory redundancies, we will urge our members to use that strength.

The council’s Labour/SNP coalition has to decide whether it stands by its pledges against compulsory redundancies and privatisation. We are not sure all their officials get those pledges otherwise redundancy and privatisation might not be on the agenda. We detect a culture that all too often imposes failed private sector solutions on public sector functions, making service delivery worse. Ask anyone who has had to phone some council services recently.

Why I'll probably vote for Corbyn

For what it’s worth, I am (probably) voting for Corbyn. I suppose, because I agree with (almost) all he has said, that shouldn’t have been a hard decision. But it was.

I’m anxious about how the party can organise with someone who has voted against it in parliament so often. You might well argue that the majority voted against the party when it came to welfare debate - and so Corbyn and the other ‘rebels’ were actually voting with the party. Nevertheless discipline is so important to organisation.

The discipline (no matter how overdone) that brought the SNP to power. The discipline that held Bevan in a broad cabinet that delivered the NHS. The discipline that delivers action in unions.

Scotland Stands with Greece: NO to austerity, democracy will not be blackmailed

Speech for @Peoplesassyscot at today's Edinburgh rally: The Peoples Assembly against Austerity in Scotland is made up of trade unions and campaigning organisations representing over 350,000 people in Scotland. Our founding principle lays out the statement that there is no need for any cuts to public spending; no need to decimate public services; no need for unemployment or pay and pension cuts; no need for austerity and privatisation.

There IS an alternative. An alternative to the economic stupidity of austerity cuts that make people poorer, reduce the money in the economy, stifle growth and lead to a vicious circle of even more cuts.

Divided we stood, and divided we fell. Now it’s time to rebuild Labour

It is now clear that the part of the Scottish election campaign that debated whether we would best get social justice by voting Labour, or voting SNP to support and cajole Labour, was painfully academic. (this first appeared in the Morning Star)

It relied on a narrow Labour win. It forgot that the real enemies are the Tories.

The “voice for Scotland” mantra has backfired. The SNP now has to grapple with a Tory-dominated British Parliament, with much less influence than if Labour had been the largest party.

Despite the pledge to fight austerity, the danger is that the only real achievement of SNP leaders may be one that in private many of them don’t really want. The Tories may happily hand over full fiscal autonomy, leaving Scotland with far more austerity and poverty than it currently faces.

Assumed guilt: Social work contempt case

First published in the Scottish Review on 6/5/15: It has been hard to be silent on the social worker 'contempt’ case over the last 18 months. As the union initially representing the individuals, it was important we avoided anything that might prejudice their case in such bizarre and unpredictable legal proceedings.

Despite the woeful inaccuracy of some social work commentators’ responses, we could not correct them without sharing details of the case which are only now fully in the public domain. Now that the social workers have been cleared, and even more importantly the paramountcy of the welfare of children has been recognised, it is time to put some records straight.

UNISON was the first to step in with legal support for our members. So confusing were the beginnings of the case that it was not clear how or where else legal support would or could come from. Honourably, the City of Edinburgh Council readily took responsibility but without that immediate union support in the first few days and weeks, our members would have been totally vulnerable in the Kafkaesque proceedings they found themselves at the centre of.

Surrendering to neo-liberal ‘fiscal discipline’

Keith Ewing suggests that Scottish independence may come sooner than the high-speed rail link, partly because of ‘Labour’s extraordinary proposal to give quasi-constitutional status to Austerity.’ Unfortunately, Labour is not alone in this as the SNP manifesto betrays. (UK Constitutional Law Association) - first published in UNISONActive on 27/4/15

He is right that the proposed ‘Budget Responsibility Lock’ – at least without a miraculous and spontaneous economic recovery – would effectively make some level of austerity legally compulsory, if it could be made to work at all.

UNISON presentation to social services vision and strategy launch

UNISON Scotland has welcomed the engagement of the social work strategic forum and has consistently supported a united strategy for social work in Scotland.

We share the vision statement of “a socially just Scotland with excellent social services delivered by a skilled, and valued workforce which works with others to empower, support and protect people with a focus on prevention, early intervention and enablement.”

The shifting politics of Scotland

First published in the Morning Star on 30 December 2014:
It’s been a quiet time in Scotland recently, apart from the Smith Commission on devolution powers, a new first minister, her programme for government, SNP mass rallies, a Labour leadership election, a shadow cabinet reshuffle, the Rangers manager handing in his notice, and the first fall of snow.

I mention the football story because there are parallels with Labour’s situation.

The Smith Commission and referendum romanticism

It is time to get over the passion and rhetoric about the Smith Commission and get down to looking at what each power – and all the powers collectively – will bring in the way of control and, critically, responsibilities.

That needs to start by asking what we need the power for. Do we want to control corporation tax just to cut it? Do we want to control income tax so that we can leave it alone just as we have since 1999? Do we want fairer local government funding that boosts local democracy or centralised control to avoid the vexed question of the council tax? Do we just want the powers - and the risks that also go with them - without a progressive vision of what to do with them?

Giving Scotland a reason to back Labour for social justice

First blogged on UNISONActive on 1/12/14 As the dust still swirls after the referendum, the challenge is to bring the focus back to the Scotland we want to see now. Of course the ‘neverendum’ campaign will continue but at some point we will have to address what we do with the powers we have now and will gain soon.

It's political, not constitutional change we need

#indyref They say a Yes vote is a vote for freedom for Scotland. If freedom means casting off your chains, then it's as good a reason to vote No. Voting no to the chains that will tie down our economy. Voting no to the defeatism on the left that chains us into believing independence is the only way to win the policies of social justice. Voting no to the chains of insularity and nationalism.

Most of us have more in common with workers in Newcastle and Manchester than with bankers, big business and the landed gentry in Scotland. We have more in common with the Londoners who elected 20 Labour councils this year than the 900,000 people in Scotland who voted Tory, Lib Dem, UKIP and BNP in 2010. Social change will not come merely from reinforcing a squiggly line drawn north of Carlisle and Berwick.

Gaza: 'We march for three things. The children, the children, the children.'

Princes St Edinburgh (c) John Stevenson

#Gaza Edinburgh’s Princes Street came to a halt again this week when marchers stopped and sat for two minutes silence to remember the dead in Gaza. Even onlookers respected the silence and applauded as the demonstrators set off again for Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister of Scotland.

On the 90 minute march, people carried a card, each with the name of one of the 2,000 Palestinians, almost 400 of them children, killed by Israeli forces. It was a poignant and powerful way of highlighting the human cost.

Support for Palestine does not equate to anti-semitism

First published in the Morning Star on 23 July 2014 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-c9a5-support-for-palestine-does-not-equate-to-anti-semitism-1

We're caught up in our internal debate in Scotland as to whether independence or devolution is the best strategy to deliver social justice at home. 

 

Whatever the result, the world outside will be the same and, especially at times like these, we must resist looking inwards at the expense of our long and proud history of internationalism.

Asking difficult referendum questions is essential

Despite some recent press coverage, UNISON's position on the referendum remains one of challenging both sides of the referendum debate on how their plans will create social justice, bring an end to austerity, poverty and health inequality. We want to know what they will do about building social cohesion, a more equal society and a world without nuclear weapons.

The referendum differs from the devolution campaign of the 1990s. There is no 'settled will of the Scottish people'. There is a divide. So, more important that taking positions of Yes or No, is pushing home the difficult questions for both camps and getting answers for our members.

And we need to be clear what the camps are...