"Shorten the hours and prolong your lives." Happy Birthday GMB

 

English Radical History

@EnglishRadical

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13h

"Shorten the hours and prolong your lives." The Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union was formed #OTD 1889 after workers at Beckton Gas Works were laid off. Led by Will Thorne, the union grew quickly and successfully campaigned for an 8-hour working day in the industry.

The Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union was formed #OTD 1889

For all my Boiler Makers friends and comrades. The predecessor to the GMB Union was formed on this day in Beckton Gas works, what is now in Newham, London by future West Ham Mayor and MP, Will Thorne. 

Hat tip @englishradical 

County Borough of West Ham Council Chamber 1960s (and now 2019)

Hat tip @lccmunicipal for this official guide to the"County Borough of West Ham" from 1963/64. Many London Boroughs at the time issued similar guides. Before 1965 West Ham and East Ham Boroughs were separate and independent London Councils. It is notable that this guide makes no reference to West Ham Council about to be merged with East Ham to form the London Borough of Newham. 

The main picture is of the Council Camber in West Ham Town Hall. It is now called the Will Thorne Room (after the former Labour Mayor, MP and founder of the GMB trade union) Old Town Hall, Stratford. 

Last week we had a Newham Council meeting in the Old Town Hall and I took the picture below of the Will Thorne room and you can see the changes.  The Council chamber is now in East Ham Town Hall and used for Newham Council Cabinet meetings.

Paying homage to Keir Hardie at West Ham

Yesterday I took my fellow UNISON NEC member (and NHS hospital worker) Mary Locke on a whistle stop tour of the Old Town Hall in Stratford. 

Mary was re-elected in May as a Labour Councillor in Birmingham. 

Mary is a huge fan of Keir Hardie who was the first ever Labour Member of Parliament. He was elected as MP for West Ham South on 4 July 1892. 

In this town hall during the 1892 the election count took place in the main hall and Keir made his acceptance speech from its outside balcony to people gathered below in the Broadway. He was then taken on a victory procession to Canning town. 

The old West Ham Council debating chamber is now called the "Will Thorne" chamber (see photo bottom right) in honour of another local MP (and Mayor) who was also a founder of the GMB union. Ironically, one of the founders of UNISON's predecessor union, NALGO, Herbert Blaine, was also a West Ham Council officer but he was also a Conservative Party National Agent! 

Bank Holiday Green Street, Harlow, Stratford & Ilford North

Both West and East Ham Labour met up today at Green Street in a sea of red for a final stall with our Parliamentary candidates, Lyn Brown & Stephen Timms.

Life time Labour supporter, 92 year old Second World War hero, Ron Higgins, who survived 32 missions as a gunner on Lancaster Bombers (the average lifespan for aircrew was only 20 missions) came with his family to show support. Ron in his youth also played for West Ham and Leyton Orient FC and later was a trade union convenor in the docks.  We worked out he first voted in a General election in 1945. He remembers Will Thorne, the founder of the GMB and local MP until 1945.

Stratford & New Town Candidate, Charlene Mclean (& beautiful baby) was also there to leaflet and talk to residents.

Newham Women's Forum were out supporting Suzy Stride in marginal Harlow and after the stall finished activists went out to door knock in Stratford and Ilford North.

West Ham Labour in Church Street "on the knocker".

On Saturday we had a door knock surgery in Church Street, West Ham, E15. 

This is probably the oldest part of the ward. West Ham Parish Church of all Saints is over 1,000 years old. King Henry VIII is reputed to have met Anne Boleyn at the church, Charles Dickens apparently used to set his watch by the time on the church clock and I wonder if founder of the trade union GMB, local Labour Councillor and MP Will Thorne use to attend this church? He was probably I think a non-conformist.

All the properties we visited were either Newham Council social housing tenancies or bought under "right to buy". It was interesting that none of the properties we visited (bar one which was a leasehold) had tenants from Eastern Europe, which suggests it is a lie that people come over to this country and get "Council housing". 

The great thing about door knocking is that you never know what you are going to come across next. Early on I met one resident who is a NHS worker and I hopefully managed to persuade her to rejoin Unison.  

Another was very annoyed about a local parking problem which had taken ages to resolve. When I asked him whether he supported Labour, he looked at me in surprise and said of course he voted Labour!

A heavily pregnant Mum with Partner and 4 kids (one disabled) and another one obviously on the way, all housed in a 2 bed flat, asked for help. She knew that there was a chronic housing shortage and massive housing list in Newham. It turned out that she was having problems accessing the internet bidding system. She just needed some assistance to get on-line. 

There were serious complaints of anti-social behaviour about teenagers sitting on block communal stairs smoking, drinking and frightening residents walking past. This is completely unacceptable and action is needed to try and stop this.  All tenants and leaseholders are directly responsible for the behaviour of their children and their visitors. If they fail to control the behaviour of their children then they need to be held to account for this.

It was also clear that some business premises rented out by the Council were leaving their yards and flat roof areas in a mess. This needs to be cleared up. It will be in their leases to keep these areas clean and tidy.

There were also problems with communal lighting, insecure security doors and fire risks from inappropriate use of storage areas which I will be also taking up with Council commercial premises managers.

When I got home I uploaded the returns on line onto the Labour Party Contact Creator (as well as some other contact sheets that I should have inputted earlier but had been too disorganised).  The sheer scale of overwhelming support for Labour in West Ham ward is stunning but it is also very humbling and not to be taken for granted.

There is a genuine debate in this country about whether "class politics" and "labour  identity" is important or not anymore. I can say with a degree of certainly that yes it is in West Ham ward and in Newham generally. Even in the more expensive owner occupied areas in the ward we still get excellent canvass returns. Why this is I genuinely do not really know. I would like to know - in order to spread the magic for May next year and 2015.

(there was also for no obvious reason a lot of very friendly domestic cats about on Saturday - so I have included them in picture college)

Action Mesothelioma Day Friday 5th July - HOPE

This lunchtime I was at the historic Old Town Hall in Stratford, E15 to help mark "Action Mesothelioma Day".

In the court yard people had gathered to mark the release of white doves as "tributes of love and embrace" to the relatives of all those who have died from asbestos related diseases.

I was asked by London Hazards as a local Newham Councillor to say a few words to the ceremony.  I said that I was a Labour Councillor but also an UNISON safety rep. I worked as a Housing officer in a large 1960s/1970s estate in nearby Tower Hamlets where until recently 90% of homes contained some form of asbestos.

This makes you think of the safety of the workers who first built this estate, those who have since maintained it and the residents who have lived in it.

This commemoration service was not only about obtaining justice and compensation for the many victims of asbestos and their families but also about how we must all argue for a different economic and political society that would not allow the health of future generations to be only second best to profit.

Next I helped out to release the doves - this was very beautiful and moving.

Tony O'Brien chaired the seminar that followed with first speaker Peter Williams pointing out that Newham and Barking had the worse death rates from Mesothelioma in Greater London. This was due to the traditional heavy industries located in East London but it was not only workers in these factories, building sites and docks who were exposed but their neighbours and even children in local schools.

There was a brave message of HOPE by Anne who is a mesothelioma sufferer, that with early diagnostic & good treatment you can have reasonable prognosis of a cure.  Anne wants everyone who knows they have been exposed to asbestos (which is probably all of us) to go for a CT scan as soon as they get any symptoms.

John McLean, GMB national safety officer reminded us that it was nonsense that no one knew asbestos was dangerous in the past. The first confirmed death from asbestos was nearly 100 years ago in Rochdale. The founder of the GMB was a local Labour MP (and before that West Ham Councillor) Will Thorne, who brought up the danger of asbestos in Parliament in the 1930s.

John also reported on the campaign for the removal all asbestos from public buildings & adequate "no fault" compensation for all victims. He told us about the promising research in the USA on treatment for mesothelioma.   This is early but great news for victims it also will help change attitudes to mesothelioma I think if the public understand it is not an automatic death sentence (if caught early and you receive good treatment).

Asbestos regulations are up for review this year but John thinks that the regulations are currently okay but need to take into account inadvertent exposure to the public.

UPDATE: LHC have published my account here with more photos of whole event by Joe Syz which I have copied the first one showing the release of the Doves.

West Ham Church of All Saints Remembrance Sunday Service

This morning I attended the Remembrance Service in the 12th Century Church of All Saints in my ward, West Ham.

The Deputy Lieutenant of Newham, Colonel Mike Dudding, our Mayor Sir Robin Wales and West Ham MP Lyn Brown was present.  As well as veterans, parishioners, residents, 7 Rifles Territorial Army, Sea Cadets, Army Cadets, Councillors and Senior Council officers.

The Church is over a 1,000 years old and is the one of the oldest (or arguably the oldest) building in Newham and lies in in the heart of West Ham Ward.  It is extremely impressive and I would encourage everyone to visit it.  

The service was taken by the vicar, The Revd Stennett Kirby.  He made a particular point of arguing that since in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim tradition, widows and orphans should be honoured, so therefore the spouses and children of servicemen and women who have been killed in recent Wars should not suffer from the Cuts that the Coalition government is proposing  (No comment but check out this BBC link here).

Even though I am a lifelong atheist, as usual, I found the service and the ceremony profoundly moving. 

After the last post and the two minutes silence, Mr Alf Gittings, a member of the Royal Navel Association read out

" They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
  Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
  At the going down of the sun and in the morning
  We will remember them".

To which we all replied "We will remember them"

I did wonder during the service whether Beckton gas worker, Will Thorne, the founder of the GMB trade union and former West Ham Councillor, Mayor and MP, had ever attended a similar service in this very same Church?  I assume he did. During the First World War he had joined the West Ham Volunteer Force with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His eldest son also joined the army and was killed in action at Ypres in 1917.

There were at least three other remembrance events in Newham today.  Check out my previous post about the 2007 West Ham All Saints service here and Thursday's East Ham Cenotaph ceremony here.

GMB mythbuster on the Local Government Pension Scheme

MYTHS EXPOSED Inaccurate information and misleading statements about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) are rife in the media. This guide highlights the most prevalent and erroneous of these myths and sets out the realities of the LGPS. MYTH: Workers in the private sector have to pay for the LGPS while local government workers reap the benefits REALITY: Everyone pays for everyone else’s pension. Companies with occupational pension provision for their employees include pension costs when pricing their goods and services. All taxpayers pay for the cost of inadequate pension saving (increasingly prevalent in the private sector) through the tax and national insurance spent on increased take up of state benefits and demand on NHS and council care services. MYTH: 25% of council tax is spent on the LGPS REALITY: This misrepresentation deliberately ignores the fact that 75% of local authority income comes from sources other than council tax. The true figure as reflected by the Society of County Treasurers is around 5% (£65 a year for the average council taxpayer). MYTH: LGPS costs are soaring and the scheme is unsustainable REALITY: The cost of the LGPS to employers for service from April 2008 (2009 in Scotland and Northern Ireland) was reduced during the reforms to the scheme that included changed benefits and higher average member contributions. Member contributions on average increased by 0.5% and have continued to rise since, now approaching 0.7% above the old scheme’s member contribution rates. The introduction of cost sharing in the new scheme is designed to manage future funding volatility. Costs associated with service before the new scheme was introduced should have been funded by employers in the past. These costs cannot be reduced by changing the scheme for current or future members. MYTH: The employer contribution rate in the LGPS is too high REALITY: There is not one employer contribution rate in the LGPS. There are over 7,000 participating employers in the scheme and each has their contribution set by the private sector actuary employed by the relevant one of the 100 funds in Great Britain. Current employer contribution rates range from 14% to 25% with an average of 18%. Given the level of past underfunding that remains to be contributed by many employers to the scheme this is a reasonable level. At the 2010 valuation the level may change because the future service cost has dropped as a result of the 2008 reforms but the legacy of past underfunding by employers remains in many, although not all, funds. MYTH: Local government pensions are paid directly by the taxpayer REALITY: The LGPS, like all private sector defined benefit schemes, is a funded scheme with real investments in UK and overseas business and tangible assets such as property all generating returns to the 101 funds that make up the Local Government Pension Scheme in the UK. The taxpayer funds a proportion of the employer contribution to the funds through local and national taxation. MYTH: The LGPS is only nominally funded REALITY: The LGPS has more than £100bn in real assets: property, investments in UK and overseas businesses, cash and government bonds. Four out of the largest 20 pension funds in the UK measured by asset level are Local Government Pension Funds [Hewitt 2010]. Total income to the scheme exceeds expenditure by £4-5bn every year [CLG 2009], even in the current climate of poor economic performance. Even in the depths of the recession LGPS investments provided nearly £3 billion for the LGPS in England alone, accounting for 27% of that scheme's income. Another factor contributing to the ongoing viability of the scheme to this is the increase in member contributions. Yield from employees increased by 15% in the last year as a result of the new contribution rates in the 2008 Scheme [CLG 2009]. MYTH: Scheme members retire on gold-plated pensions, protected for life REALITY: Around half of LGPS pensions in payment are below £3,000 a year [Audit Commission 2010]. The mean average pension is £4,033 with the average for women only £2,600 [CLG 2009]. As with any pension scheme member’s accrued rights, it was generally held that pensions already paid for were protected for life, however, the unilateral cut in the indexation of pensions from RPI to CPI has brought this into question for both public and private sector pensions. As a result of the Tory-Lib Dem budget LGPS members are likely to lose a quarter of the value of their pensions over the next 25 years pushing many more on to means tested benefits. MYTH: High earners in the LGPS receive unreasonably high pensions REALITY: In local government highly paid employees are in the same pension scheme as the workers near the minimum wage. In the private sector many company directors and senior managers set up their own exclusive defined benefit schemes on extremely generous terms while their employees have only a low value defined contribution scheme. The average accrued pension for a director in the private sector is £227,726pa, 56 times higher than the average LGPS pension [TUC PensionsWatch 2010]. Some members of the LGPS retire on very high pensions as a result of receiving very high salaries (236 local government employees earn more than £142,500pa), not as a result of an over-generous pension scheme. MYTH: Local government workers have a job for life and better pay than everyone else REALITY: The average length of membership in the pension scheme is only six years in stark contrast to the vision of a job for life. Existing jobs are often part time and low paid with minimal opportunity for overtime and other mechanisms common in the private sector to boost income. When comparing full time workers who are saving for retirement through an occupational pension scheme, public sector workers actually earn £22 per week less than their private sector comparators. The 'total reward figure', which is gross pay and employers' pension contributions, in the private sector is £666 and in the public sector is £644 per week [ONS 2010]. Local government pay is also low in the public sector context with two thirds of local government workers earning less than £21,000 a year. MYTH: To make pensions fair public sector provision must be reduced to the level common in the private sector REALITY: This would increase the number of older people forced to live in poverty which in turn will increase the cost to the taxpayer of state benefits, health and care services. It is never the right solution to inequality to stoop to the level of the lowest common denominator. In education the solution to problem of good schools and bad schools is not to worsen the good schools so all children are poorly educated. In pensions the solution is not to worsen the good schemes but to raise the standard of the inadequate schemes. In fact defined benefit pension provision in the private sector attracts a future service employer contribution of 15.6% [DWP Pension Trends] compared with less than 14% in the LGPS. MYTH: LGPS benefits need to be cut or member contributions increased because of deficits in the funds REALITY: The LGPS is estimated to be at least 75% funded with sufficient assets to pay all pensions due for the next 20 years without any further contributions [Audit Commission 2010]. Where deficits exist they relate to past service and underfunding by employers. One reason for current deficits is that LGPS funds were between 1990 and 1993 encouraged by the then Conservative government to fund only to 75% so the pension scheme could fund lower poll tax bills. Now deficits are measured against a 100% funding requirement, the cost of this historic underfunding is clear. Changes to benefits would only affect the future service cost which, as set out above, is already below the private sector average for defined benefit provision. MYTH: The current economic situation means member contributions to the LGPS need to be increased REALITY: Benefits already earned by members have to be paid, whatever changes are made to the scheme. There are no short term cost savings to be made from making radical benefit cuts. Increases to member contribution rates would not aid the Treasury’s finances unless the government introduced a specific tax on LGPS members (which would be contrary to their stated commitment to encourage pension saving). Instead any increase would be transferred into LGPS funds which have already been valued, without going through a valuation revision an increase in member contributions is unlikely to have any impact on employer contributions for at least three years. Members are currently subject to a three year pay freeze, without the protection for the lowest earners that exists in other parts of the public sector. Some members of the LGPS earn only 37p an hour above the minimum wage and many lower earning potential LGPS members opt out of the scheme on grounds of affordability. This trend is particularly common among part time workers (the vast majority of whom are women), in Greater Manchester, one of the larger funds, only 10% of full time staff opt out of the LGPS compared with 30% of part time staff. MYTH: LGPS members retire at 60 and get a pension for nothing REALITY: The normal retirement age in the LGPS is 65 and has been for many years. Members of the scheme contribute between 5.5% and 7.5% of earnings depending on salary, averaging over 6.4% overall. This is more than double the amount the average member of a defined contribution scheme contributes. MYTH: The new LGPS only affects new starters while existing members have their own preferential scheme REALITY: Reforms to the LGPS affected all contributing scheme members, existing and new. The LGPS is not a two tier scheme, the LGPS 2008 is the scheme for any one of the two million people working in LGPS covered employment whether they started ten years ago, ten minutes ago or are due to start tomorrow. Existing members sacrificed benefits and increased their contributions in order to keep the scheme sustainable. The LGPS is the largest pension scheme in the country with more than 1.7m contributing members, 1m deferred members and a further 1m pensioner members.

Picture of former Labour West Ham Councillor, Mayor, MP and founder of the GMB, Will Thorne on a fact finding mission to Revolutionary Russia in 1917.  Hat tip Tom and original link to GMB site here.

Newham Council, its Logo and my blog

This morning I received this email from Ian Tompkins, Head of Newham Council Communications Unit about the use of the Council logo in this post about the sacking of Newham UNISON Chair Michael Gavan. This is what he sent.

Dear Mr Gray

We've noticed on your blog site there is a reproduction of our council logo (the Newham "ribbon" logo). I cannot trace any request from you for permission to use this so would ask that you remove it immediately.

Thank you.
Ian Tompkins, Head of Communications, London Borough of Newham, Town Hall, Barking Road, London E6 2RP
Being the courteous and polite fellow that I am this is how I responded.

Dear Mr Tompkins

Thank you for your email. I must admit to be somewhat surprised that senior managers spend their time scouring the blogsphere on the look out for errant Newham council logos. I am not sure that this is a good use of my Council tax? Mind you, I suppose this is a better use of senior manager’s time than victimising and sacking trade unionists. I have replaced the offending logo with a photo taken from a public place. I assume that this is OK? If not please let me know.

Formally, please can I ask for permission to use the logo since what with the future industrial action over Michael Gavan’s dismissal, the internal appeal and employment tribunal applications (all sort of hearings) there will be lots and lots to blog about in the future.

Cheers
John
I thought I might as well post some pictures of past Newham trade union and Labour Party leaders who will no doubt be spinning in their graves at what is going on over Michael’s dismissal.

Newham is arguably the birthplace of the Labour Party and modern day trade unions. Left is Keir Hardie, the first ever Labour MP who was elected for West Ham in 1892 ; Herbert Blaine who is credited in 1905 with forming NALGO which eventually became part of UNISON, while working for West Ham Council (ironically like Michael he was not a Labour Party supporter and was in fact a lifelong Tory!) and finally Will Thorne, West Ham Labour MP 100 years ago and founder of the GMB (Beckton gas works).

UPDATE: 25 minutes after I sent this email at 18:07 today I got this two word reply from Mr Tompkins - "Thank you". A bit brief for a Head of Communications I suppose. What exactly does this mean? can I use the Newham logo? I suppose it does. As suggested on this post's "comments" should I put in a FOI request?