Monday: last day of Local Government Conference

Apologies that this is a bit late but it has been busy, busy. I was very good on Monday and got up at 6.30am for a lovely run along East Cliff then back along the beach. Weather warm and sunny. On the way passed the small army of Bournemouth council workers, emptying bins, sweeping roads and cleaning the beaches. All UNISON members I hope?

Motion 27 supported by the Service Group Executive was narrowly defeated by a card vote (5000?). The motion sensibly wanted to split Local Government conference and National Delegate Conference. So instead of having a very long “conference” that for Local Government members starts Saturday evening and finishes late Friday with close of NDC there would be two separate conferences. This makes perfect sense to me, since it is hardly family friendly to be away for so long and everyone is so knackered at the end. Scottish region was opposed to this motion because the proposed new date in April it clashed with their conferences and Scottish holidays. Hopefully some sort of compromise can be sorted out for next year.

Croydon UNISON Black workers had made a very good video on black history which was shown to conference.

Jean Geldart was ambushed again, this time by Dave Prentis who hosted a UNISON video of her career. They had even found some TV interviews of Jean from the 1970’s. Dave pointed out that Jean was the daughter of the first communist Councillor and the last communist MP. He made a joke that Tony Woodley, the competitive joint GS of Unite said to him that “we have more tankies in Unite than Unison – Dave replied “yes, but we have Jean Geldart". A number of retired activists phrased Jean for her loyalty and hard work for the union. NALGO (one of the founding unions of UNISON) was very different from nowadays. One activist said that it was dominated by “masons and Catholics”. Conference sang “God Save the Queen” at the end. There were very, very women activists. In fact the union newsletter at the time had a “Prettiness New Member” competition.

I spoke on the motion 43 which was on housing issues (see next post). Otherwise a very quiet end to LG conference.