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. 

The best part of the London Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony: Homage to our NHS

I really enjoyed the opening ceremony last night. I thought it was just simply brilliant. The bit about the birth and importance of the National Health Service (NHS) was a particular favourite.

It seems that not everyone shares this view. Nick Lowes from "Hope Not Hate" reports that

"...Conservative MP Aiden Burley (Cannock) described the opening ceremony as "the most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen". He went on: "Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap."

This from the man who enjoyed a stag do in France with friends dressed up in Nazi uniforms".

Nuf said?

Hat tip photo to UK Uncut (which of course did not appear during the acual ceremony)

Nice Nick meets Nasty Nazi Nick

Searchlight editor Nick Lowles confronts defeated BNP leader Nick Griffin at Barking and Dagenham Council Count. Great stuff!

White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18

I have just finished this book by Searchlight editor, Nick Lowles. It is now a little out of date but I would recommend the book to those who like to believe that the fascists are only “nationalists” or even “patriots” when their political parties (BNP, NF) are clearly led by life long National Socialists (Nazi).

Combat 18 use to provide the body guards for BNP leaders such as Griffin before they fell out with him. It finally disintegrated after years of violence when they split over money and ended up fighting and even killing each other.

I was astonished to read in this months Searchlight (page 7) that two of the notorious fascists mentioned in the book, “crazed long time Nazi and Satanist David Myatt” converted to an extreme form of Islam, while former BNP member and the nail bomber who killed 3 people in London, David Copeland, “had sought a extreme form of Islam” while in prison.

The article mentioned another former BNP member, Stephen Jones, who is also serving life for murder who has converted to an extreme Islam sect which threatened to have the moderate prison Imam killed.

Interestingly to speculate why they turn to Islamic extremism?

Voting BNP is Evil – so says God

Despite being a convinced atheist it is always nice to know that God is on your side. Even if it is the Church of England (CofE) version which (apologies for the cheap dig) may have many divisions but none of which would have impressed Stalin!

This afternoon I went to a well attended national meeting in Central London organised by Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation. This meeting was on how to meet the growing threat of the BNP, examine what we (anti-fascists) do well and also where we need to improve.

To the left of main Picture is the Rev Paul Butler, a CofE vicar in Deptford, south east London, who gave a marvellous presentation. He is in danger of giving the Established Church a good name in the wider Labour movement. Rev Paul talked to the meeting about how the Church of England is officially not only opposed to the Far Right, but in every diocese in the country there should be a working group meeting on a regular basis on how to tackle fascists. He talked about the Christian concept of “evil” and how the BNP is a modern day example of biblical “evil”. It’s an organisation that’s nasty with a divisive approach which not only encourages hatred between communities and faiths but also hatred against individuals such as gays. He pointed out that when Christians are baptised or confirmed they have to renounce “evil”. To me he seemed to confirm that voting for the BNP is incompatible with Christianity and is in fact an “evil” act. Yep, that makes sense (apologies to Rev Paul for any theological misunderstandings on my behalf).

The first speaker was Searchlight editor Nick Lowles. Nick gave a sober analysis of where we are now and what we are facing in the future. He clearly felt that we cannot defeat the fascists unless we truly understand the reasons why people vote BNP. Simply dismissing these people as Nazi is not going to be at all productive. We need to organise, be self critical and honest. I was pleased to hear that it is now accepted that the crude election leaflets and posters on “Smash the Nazi” etc are now recognised as being counterproductive. They turn off voters (even though I personally love ‘em!).

Nick thinks that there is a danger from the “collapse” of a section of the traditional working class vote for the Labour Party, who will now simply not vote at all for any mainstream party. Even worse, some of them will also then go on to vote BNP. I am not totally sure about this. Yes, the traditional working class is changing radically. The regional secretary of the T&G, Steve Hart, pointed out that in 1979 there was 12.5 million trade unionists, the majority of which were manual workers. Nowadays, there are 6.5 million, 50% of which are professionals! The Labour Party and many trade unions have not on a whole handled this change very well. Are the traditional working class Tory voters now voting BNP? In May 2008 in poor London inner city wards, even in white working class areas the BNP did not poll very well at all. They seem to get a lot of their support from outer London supposedly from more prosperous boroughs?

There were also presentations on case studies by Gerry Gable on organising in Redbridge and Epping as well as Lorraine Fitzsimons from the Yorkshire “Hope not hate” campaign. Searchlight international officer, Graeme Atkinson and then Paul Meszaros spoke about the 2009 European Election (we need to get our act together on this). I enjoyed Graeme’s story about how the Far Right/Fascist group in the European Union Parliament fell apart because they were all so suspicious about working with “foreigners” who they all hate of course. For example, the granddaughter of Mussolini, Alessandra a fascist MEP from Italy, called all Romanians “habitual criminals”. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Romanian Far Right members of this group kicked up a fuss and it folded shortly afterwards.

The very sober message at the end of these presentations was that due to the collapse of UKIP, the BNP will have a chance of winning a seat in Europe next year unless we organise. Under Proportional Representation (PR) in the North West they will only need 8.5% of the vote to win a seat. In many local council seats they regularly win 20-30% of the vote.

(I had to leave early and missed the rest of the meeting – picture left to right of Rev Paul Butler, Southwark Diocese; Linda Perks, UNISON London Regional Secretary; Gloria Hanson, UNISON London Regional Convenor; Nick Lowles, Searchlight; and London Assembly member (Labour) Murad Qureshi.