Despite protestations for unity from those who wanted to limit discussion at our union conference – the strategy of the Broad Left Network was heard loud and clear on the conference floor – putting forward the tactics to take our union campaigning forward. And getting an increasing echo.
Whilst everyone was in agreement that we needed to ensure that areas which had missed out on getting the Tory anti-union 50% threshold would get re-balloted to get the strike mandate – there was not an overwhelming endorsement of the limited tactics of the Left Unity (LU) leadership for more of the same. Members may be struggling to make ends meet but they are increasingly recognising that we need a stronger campaign to take on the Government and win. As evidenced by the action being taken across the rest of the public sector. Broad Left Network members will be at the fore in fighting to win strike ballots whilst arguing for the most effective action to defeat the government.
There is a failure to understand from the LU leadership that to fully develop our demands for the National Climate Service and to get these demands out into the wider trade union and environmental movement that we need to actively involve our reps and members. This led to them opposing a green motion in the DWP but delegates overturned this recommendation and we have good policies carried in both the DWP Group conference and ADC.
The emergency motion calling for all the union elections for the General Secretary, Assistant General Secretary and the NEC to be run at the same time next year was only narrowly defeated. The debate highlighted the discussion to nominate all the candidates could have been done at the AGMs and turnout could have been increased with the union just focussing on elections all at the same time. Instead, we are expected to prepare for this election at a time when reps and members are 100% committed to winning our dispute on pay and jobs
The debate on the complaint about the block vote elections showed how the LU leadership are incapable of just admitting that they have done anything wrong. This leadership pushed to get conference to agree that it was fine for them to break the rules of the union despite the complaint about the block vote elections being upheld. They had the opportunity to put in rule changes to adjust the rules for these elections to take into account delegates online both this year and last year and failed to competently do so last year. Instead of taking the upheld complaint on the chin they chose to malign the member trustees and the complainant for pointing this out. Whilst there was recognition that it was difficult to do anything to remedy the breach at this late stage the LU NEC tried to use this to cover the fact that they had breached the rules of our union. The BLN member on the NEC had already told them how they could have run the election involving all delegates in accordance with the rules but they chose not to do so. They had better pull their socks up and do it properly next year.
All the divisions between the out of touch top table and the delegates really came to a head over the equality debates. The NEC had dishonestly attempted to dress up the attack on Proud in a motion A41 where the rest of the demands were innocuous ways to improve equality that could have easily already have been put in place. Delegates saw through this veiled attack and voted to support A293 instead. But LU were not content to recognise their defeat on the attacks on Proud. They then proceeded to pack in speakers following the lacklustre presentation of the national organising strategy. This was done under the instructions of the president Fran Heathcote messaging their members to actively prevent delegates getting to debate A50. The anger at the way this was done meant that the WhatsApp messages very quickly were made public. A BLN member attempted to make a point of order to highlight that the President Fran Heathcote was breaking the Principal Rule 1f of our union to promote equality for all with the blatant bias against our LGBT+ members. Whilst challenging the ruling of the President that this was not a point of order did not succeed, the evidence of how the President Fran Heathcote had worked to stifle debate at our conference circulated widely amongst delegates and many branches responded to put motion A50 into the guillotine section. Again, the LU NEC tried to ensure that this motion was talked out of time by packing the speakers into the guillotine section where traditionally motions which are widely or unanimously supported are moved very quickly and seconded formally to get as much policy picked up in this section as possible. But despite these further machinations motion A50 was moved to highlight how the well-respected Trans activist Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale had been removed from the TUC LGBT+ committee without any warning or consultation with our LGBT+ Proud committee. The NEC speaker asserted that it was too late to do anything and urged conference to vote against the motion but delegates were clear that they wanted the flawed decision reversed and voted overwhelmingly to carry motion A50. Conference has overwhelmingly supported our trans and non-binary members every year and passed policy that the LU leadership does everything it can to ignore and undermine in favour of its divisive stance to pit equality groups against each other. Yet again they have been defeated.
So, conference far from being the stage-managed election campaign to appoint the successor to Serwotka when he retires next year, many of our long-standing activists reflected that we had not seen such tactics employed at our conference since the bad old days under the old right wing. The handling of the debates, the challenges and treatment of anyone who did not agree with the LU NEC very much damaged the standing of the President Fran Heathcote and tarnished the attempts to coronate her as the successor to the GS.
We must have unity in action to defeat this government and build the highest turnout in all the strike ballots. But the idea of unity should never be used to undermine the hard-won democratic traditions of our union to discuss the best tactics to win and build an inclusive fighting union.
PCS Broad Left Network 