UNISON National Labour Link Forum 2025: Day 1 & 2

UNISON Labour Link is the part of our union that is made up of members who decide to affiliate to the Labour Party and the Forum is our annual meeting, which this year took place in Glasgow. 

I attended as an elected London delegate but came early as member of the National Labour Link committee for a pre forum planning meeting. In the morning I went for a run along the Clyde which took longer than expected due to getting just a little lost.

Forum started in that evening with delegation meetings and then a reception addressed by my former UNISON NEC colleague and now MP, Katrina Murray. Afterwards the London delegates had a meal in an Italian restaurant in Argyle Street. 

Forum started and finished the next day with a mixture of reports, motions, keynote speakers and panel debates. 

Former UNISON national officer (and London lay activist) Deirdre Costigan gave a well received speech to forum on the 1st year of a Labour Government and gave an honest and considered response to sometimes robust questions in the Q&A. 

The highlight to me, was the panel debate on "Tackling the rise of Reform" with guest speaker Nick Lowles from "Hope not Hate", who gave a fascinating account of recent research on who supports Reform, why they support such a right wing, anti worker Party and what we should all be thinking of doing to win back disillusioned voters. I asked the panel about the importance of social economic class inequality in this debate, which pretty much all the panel agreed was a key issue. 

Forum finished on time, with all the annual reports agreed and all the tabled motions debated. Looking forward to next year's Forum. 

Why we walked out of UNISON Community Conference? because a man dismissed for bullying & harassing 14 women was chairing it

 

A week ago there was a walkout of UNISON delegates and Service Group Executive members from our annual Community conference, which was being held in Glasgow. This has never happened before in Community.

This was an unplanned and spontaneous walk out since we had no idea until the last minute, that an imposter, pretending to be the lay President of UNISON, Paul Holmes, was going to chair our conference. Despite the fact he has recently been dismissed by his employer, following bullying and harassment allegations by 14 (yes 14) female UNISON members (and also by at least one male who was threatened with violence).

Not only has Paul Holmes been dismissed by his employer for bullying and harassing women but the current majority Group on the UNISON NEC have decided that they will "change" long established union rules to allow him to be our lay President, despite being unemployed, and therefore not eligible under rule to hold office.

The NEC has no right to change our rules to support men accused of such bullying and harassment. Only our annual National Delegate Conference can change such rules.

Paul Holmes has also recently lost an employment tribunal case for what is called "interim relief", which means the courts think it is likely he was fairly dismissed for abusing all these women.

We are a relatively small UNISON Service Group with only 60 delegates representing some 60,000 members. We also had visitors and members of the Service Group Executive.

I think around 25 members walked out including a former Female UNISON President, members of the Service Group Executive, delegates and visitors. Far more would have walked out if we had known in advance about this outrage.

Since then I have been contacted by UNISON members from all over the UK horrified that a man dismissed for abusing so many women can be allowed to hold office. They want him to be at least suspended until there is a proper investigation and process by UNISON into the allegations.

Otherwise it seems UNISON is saying to our 1 million plus female members, that no matter what you say, or how many say it, we won't believe you if you say it about one of our male NEC favourites.