TUC Congress 2024: Sunday

This afternoon at 4pm it was the start of Trade Union Congress 2024 in Brighton Conference centre. Congress will last until Wednesday. I am here as a UNISON delegate and was really pleased that the first motion was "Standing up for care workers" moved by a UNISON care worker, Sian Stockholm. This was passed unanimously. 

The President this year is Fire Brigade Union (FBU) General Secretary, Matt Wrack,who started his career as a firefighter in Silvertown, Newham. He spoke passionately about Grenfell in his address and was also in tears after the speeches about him in the "vote of thanks" for his past year as President. 

The address by sororal delegate from the Labour Party, was by former trade union lawyer, Ellie Reeves MP (sister of the Chancellor) .  She made it clear that while there will be differences between the unions and a Labour Government, Labour under Keir Starmer will remain the party for workers. Afterwards Matt presented Ellie with a TUC Gold Badge. 

While Akhator Joel Odigie, the general secretary of ITUC Africa also addressed Congress. He reminded us that Africa supplies Europe not only with NHS workers but precious metals for mobile phones and car batteries. He wished that Labour UK plans on rolling back zero hour contracts, fire and rehire etc were not also happening in Africa.   

Final item today was remembering union activists who had passed away in the last year.

I will try and post on Congress, speakers, speeches and fringes when I can. It is exciting that this is the first TUC in 14 years to take place at the same time as a Labour Government.

London Labour Conference 2024

Recovering from a busy weekend at the London Labour annual conference, as a UNISON Labour Link delegate. I arrived late on Saturday due to advice surgery commitment and missed keynote speakers David Lammy MP and Ellie Reeves MP. 

The venue was packed and a large number of stalls outside conference hall. There was definitely a positive conference buzz but also a recognition that the London Mayoral and GLA election in May (only 60 days away) will be tough and bloody since the Tories have resorted to the sewer in a desperate bid to avoid defeat. The Forthcoming General election will be equally vile. 

During lunch there was a great fringe organised by Labour Unions on the "New Deal for Working Parties" commitment. Our UNISON regional secretary, Jo Galloway, took part in the panel debate. 

Later there was another very interesting panel debate on AI and I asked the question that while I am not a luddite and welcome most technological change, there is a genuine real concern about AI being used to replace human face to face contact (I am a housing officer and there is a move to not meet residents in person but instead communicate via email and telephone) and that many back office workers face job insecurity from AI. We must have a "Just transition" and protect vulnerable workers. 

I also attended a useful seminar on election campaigning, there is a new script for door knocking and look forward to trying it out. 

The outstanding item yesterday was the speech to conference by London Mayor, Sadiq Khan. He arrived with no fanfare and started speaking to delegates and shaking hands (and being asked to pose for many selfies!) - See main picture in collage. The London Labour Movement "love" for Sadiq, was to me, pretty obvious. The many dreadful and disgusting comments made against him in recent days by senior Tories must have taken their toll on him and his family, but he is fighting back and gave a passionate and rousing speech which inspired and enthused conference. 

After conference there was a fund raising dinner with further speeches and the inevitable Labour raffle, where I continued with my run of luck in these events, by winning the book "Tribes" by David Lammy MP, which I look forward to reading. 

Conference started at 9am this morning (Sunday) and for some reason I needed lots of coffee to keep me up to speed. 

There was a number of great debates and speeches (including another panel debate on the importance of "New Deal"). I enjoyed the good humoured and intelligent presentation by Sadiq's campaign manager Matthew Greenough, (Known apparently in London circles as "Welsh Matt", who to my extreme pleasure, repeated a famous saying by St David in Welsh)

He was also in another panel debate on the GLA election, where I asked the question should we respond to the awful and disgusting racist comments, by trolls that are made on nearly every tweet Sadiq makes? He said "no", it will just amplify these hateful messages which is what they want and instead concentrate on the many positive things that Sadiq is doing to improve the everyday lives of Londoners. 

Later GLA London Labour Group Leader, Len Duvall, spoke about the "Battle of Ideas" that is going on in this campaign, while the closing speech was by local MP, Rushanara Ali, who called out the "Shame of the desperate Talking talking down her Borough...no longer is there "dog whistle" politics, it's now a fog horn"

There was a number of other fantastic contributions by many other speakers and delegates that I haven't listed. 

My final comment is to thank the London affiliated unions for electing me to the London Labour Party Regional Executive Committee, which  I look forward to serving upon. 

London Biennial Conference (III) - Housing Workshop, Ken, Motions and Election Results

This is the last post on the London Labour Party conference held on Saturday. Life moves on rapidly nowadays. Who would have guessed on Saturday we would now be celebrating an income tax increase for the rich! Lovely stuff, better late than never.

Lunch was provided by Newham Labour group, many thanks for a nice curry and glass of wine. Nothing too good for the workers. In the queue I met properly for the first time Hackney Councillor and well known Labour blogger Luke Akehurst. We both agreed that it is a bit strange to come across folk in person that you have only met electronically beforehand.

I forgot to return the conference workshop forms in time so I had been put down to attend the Contact Creator workshop. Now this is an important campaigning tool but I am already due to attend training so I bunked off to go to the “London Housing in the Election” workshop. This was being run by Cllr Jamie Carswell, Deputy Mayor of Hackney. Joanne Milligan chaired. Also present was Paul Stone Deputy Leader of Islington Labour group. The heroine of the hour, new Tower Hamlets Councillor and diss-respect slayer, Rachel Saunders was there with Labour NEC member and employment rights lawyer, Ellie Reeves.

Housing had been a key London issue of the conference so far, mentioned by most speakers. The fear is that Boris is road testing for the national Tories in London. As Robin Wales had said already, don’t believe what he says; look at what he actually does.

Jamie is also the “London Councils” lead on Housing. The major concern about Boris is that he has ditched the 50% target for social housing in all London new build schemes. Boris has also increased the eligibility for access to subsidised shared ownership to those with an income of £72,000 pa (from £60,000?). Possibly even worse Boris has cancelled the vital infrastructure projects such as the DLR extension to Barking and the Thames Gateway Bridge. What this means is that Barking is still supposed to have been identified as an area of housing growth but what is the point of building more housing if there is no transport infrastructure for residents to get to work. Doesn’t Boris understand the concept of “joined up thinking?

The most graceless thing of course by our so called “London Mayor” is his proposal that 45% of all social housing should be built in the 9 Labour boroughs which have only 27% of the population. Gerrymandering or what? Effectively, what this mean is that Tory boroughs will only allow private housing developments and will try and export their “poor” (and God forbid potential Labour voters) to Labour boroughs. It had been pointed out many times that Boris is surrounding himself with advisers associated with the very wicked former Tory leader of Westminster Council, Shirley Porter. The Tories obviously also believe that social housing is tenure of the last resort and the desperate. So out of sight out of mind?

Interestingly Jamie reminded us that the horrible term “Social Housing” was invented by one Michael Heseltine. Jamie prefers the term “Public housing” which I think is far better (even though in the States it has similar negative contentions to social housing – but there you go).

There was other interesting stuff on Boris, such as he is including rebuild in his 50,000 new homes target (so if he knocks down 50,000 homes in the next 4 years and only builds 50,000 new ones then he will have still reached his target); the impact of “gated communities” (communities???), the Warwick 2 housing statement (level playing field for Councils and RSLs), shortage of family seized housing units, HMOs, managing areas were there are more than one public housing landlord.

There was a bit of cut and thrust in the Q&A. While the future of Council Housing is of course still very important it has to be recognised that a significant percentage of housing stock in London has been transferred (30-35%?) or built by RSLs so we have to take this on board. We must make sure that we are pursuing policies that ensure that such new (and old) public housing landlords are being held to account.

I made a suggestion that while there are some very good RSL public housing landlords there are some very, very bad ones. One solution would be for Labour councillors and party members to join the boards of such landlords to drive up standards. Landlords who treat their residents badly will also treat their staff with similar disdain. Councillors also need to call rogue landlords to account in their boroughs. This is an issue that needs exploring further.

There was a very poplar suggestion that all empty homes should have their council tax increased the longer they remained empty and Paul Smith (deputy leader of Islington Labour Group) came up with a very good idea about organising a petition against Boris getting rid of the 50% target.

Afterwards was Ken Livingstone's speech which went down very well. Ken was on form. He thanked the Labour Party for the magnificent effort that everyone put in during the GLA election. He led in all but 4 London boroughs which puts paid to the ES lie that he was the Zone 1 mayor. It was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote that caused most problems. Ken sincerely hoped that people would not take this out on Brian Paddock by voting him out of “I’m a Celebrity”. Since Boris had cancelled the congestion charge on Porches et al in central London, he now has a financial “black hole” to fill – so watch out ordinary Londoners.

Next we debated resolutions on health & safety and housing. There were also emergency motions on Boris cancelling transport schemes, Post offices POCA contracts and windfall taxes. I spoke, so did UNISON delegates Gloria Hanson and Rae Voller.

The election results were very interesting. West Ham Alan Griffiths lost to Luke Akehurst. Check out Luke’s post (and take) on these results.

Most of the conference then seemed to decamp to the nearby Edward VII pub where over a pint or three the world was properly put to rights and a good time was had by all.

Civil Liberties – London Region NDC Fringe

There was a very good London regional fringe on the Wednesday evening on Civil Liberties. It was chaired by London Deputy Convenor, Conroy Lawrence. We had Tony Bunion (left) from “Statewatch” talking about CCTV cameras, passenger name records, finger printing for passports (from age 6?) and the EU aim of having one ID card for all purposes – access to the library, doctor, hospital and social security.

The second speaker was Ellie Reeves (right) from Thompson Solicitors. Ellie is an employment law expert. She criticised David Davis’ recent stance on civil liberties when he was totally silent on the surveillance and restrictions of striking minor in the 1980’s. Ellie was also involved in the Gate Gourmet dispute, were many members were low paid women, who often had English as a second language. During that dispute they were sacked with a megaphone for attending a union meeting. Ellie pointed out how weak the law is on with regard to convert surveillance of workers in dispute with their employer or insurance companies.

I asked her a question about employers who try to stop back office staff having an alcoholic drink in their lunchtime. Which she said would depend on the nature of the work and the contract of employment. Another person asked whether compulsory staff uniforms were legal? Ellie said it could well be deemed a “reasonable instruction” by an employer.

By co-incidence, Ellie is also a Labour Party NEC member and when I came home there was an email from a member in Tower Hamlets who have nominated her to stand again for the NEC. Ballot papers out next week. I must try and post on these important elections.

The London region social took place that night in the same hotel. A good time was had by all.