http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ Weblog of a union leader en http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/images/billyhayes.gif http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ Billy Hayes, weblog of the general secretary of the British Communication Workers Union (CWU). Billy Hayes Copyright 2008 2008-07-17T16:26:34-00:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P986 The new youth justice plan offers proven ways of dealing with offenders, while Cameron can only urge yet more prison. Polly Toynbee The Guardian, Tuesday July 15, 2008 writes: 986@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Polly Toynbee The Guardian, Tuesday July 15, 2008 writes:

It was what the prime minister didn't say that was encouraging. For once, a weakened government inclined to bend with the breeze has stood reasonably firm. Gordon Brown didn't promise yet another useless criminal justice bill. (It would have been Labour's 60th.) He didn't thump the podium and swear to bang up every hoodie and throw away the key.

One teenage death has followed another in the past weeks with boys' lives wasted, girls weeping over wilting flowers, distraught mothers calling for action: images that stir one of those media frenzies on youth crime. Yet despite appearances, it may not be rising. Mercifully the new youth justice plan is about intensive early intervention with families in chaos - not locking away yet more children, with thousands already imprisoned for non-violent offences.

In full foghorn mode, howling for the blood of hoodies, the Sun called for an end to Labour's "non-judgmental experiment". The Mail fulminated about "groan-inducing" initiatives, the Times accused Brown of political floundering, the Express was incandescent. Loud was the call for prison for any knife-carrier.

This "non-judgmental experiment" is, of course, imaginary. Without blinking at the contradiction, the prime minister could boast that crime is down by a third, violent crime by 40%. And yet he boasted of the steep rise in prison numbers, up from 60,000 in softie Tory times to more than 80,000 now, and 96,000 soon - presumably regardless of future crime rates.

But remedies in the new youth justice plan are a great deal more likely to work than prison. For a long time now it's been clear a relatively small number of families - Brown said 110,000 - cause most crime and violence, sometimes for generations. Strathclyde's violence-reduction unit reports: "We often get knives being used by grandfathers, fathers and sons." So much for the idea that marriage and living with fathers is always good for Cameron's "broken society".

The spate of bloody stabbings has been shocking - but once the press is on a roll with a theme, it's often hard to tell if it's a reporting phenomenon or a genuine rise. Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, has his doubts. In London, he says, murder has declined slightly - from 2.6% per 100,000 people in 2000 to 2.2% in 2007. However, the victims are getting younger, with twice as many under-17s. Are the methods changing? No, there were 70 deaths by stabbing in each of the past two years.

Is there now a new generation habitually carrying knives out there? Not really. During May and June the police stopped and searched in Operation Blunt 27,000 likely looking types and found only 500 - under 2% - had a knife. Garside concludes that the prevalence of knife-carrying is considerably less than current panic suggests. It is not, of course, much of a danger to the general public: poor young men killing each other is tragic, but it's a collective self-harming, turning knives on one another in the poorest places: in London, Lambeth and Newham are hotspots, with zero deaths in plush Harrow and Richmond.

This is a collective cry for attention among those who are otherwise disregarded. Only violence makes anyone notice the most deprived estates. Why do they do it? Those who have no chance of social esteem will devise their own dysfunctional hierarchies, codes of respect for the disrespected. As for danger, the young are considerably more likely to commit suicide than kill someone else.

Murder in western societies follows a highly predictable pattern - a mirror of the degree of social inequality. America, the most unequal society, has most murders, at some six per 100,000; the UK's 1.7 per 100,000 is a little higher than the EU average.

To explain is not to excuse individuals. No one would suggest anything but jail for stabbings. But the Tories calling for automatic prison for anyone carrying a knife is madness: Alf Hitchcock, the government's knife tsar, says only 15% of knife-carriers intend to take part in crime or gang activity. The other 85% carry knives out of fear, in a world where police seem utterly unable to protect the boys at risk. Knife-carriers will instead get community service, 300 hours of highly visible work, often on Friday and Saturday nights and at weekends - a good deterrence.

Today's youth justice has none of Tony Blair's old eye-catching gimmicks with his call for marching yobs to cashpoints. (What planet was he on that he thought they carried credit cards?) There was some gnashing of teeth yesterday that Jacqui Smith's talk of letting offenders see the harm they do was presented so badly. There was no intention of marching violent kids into A&E to gawp at knife wounds. Restorative justice - where criminals talk to those who have suffered crime (not necessarily their victims) can work very well.

The youth justice plan spells out a ladder of interventions, beginning with families at most risk being brought into Sure Start. Young people on first offence will have the chance to avoid court if they and their parents opt together for an eight-week course - pilot schemes show this leads to far less reoffending; and for the 20,000 families whose children have committed repeated crimes there will be intervention in the form of special units for intensive parenting support - an expensive scheme with excellent results.

Here are policies that often work. Nothing works on everyone, and crime is never eradicated in a free society. But all through history there have been waves of youth violence. Medieval apprentice boy riots, razor gangs of the 1920s, teddy-boy flick knives of the 1950s, mods and rockers, Pinky in Brighton Rock, Clockwork Orange copycats and a chain-stick craze in the 1970s all attest to gang violence as part of youth culture, among boys with not much else.

This is not a "broken society" at all, but a time of falling crime. History suggests a deep recession will send it rising upwards again. We shall see. But how dare David Cameron use the poorest and most dysfunctional 2% of families to hold up as exemplars of a society that has lost its sense of right and wrong? Cameron moralises but offers only yet more prison. Labour's record on prison has been pitiful - but now at least it is resisting this hue and cry for more of the same.
]]> 2008-07-17T16:25:34-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P985 Graeme Wearden The Guardian, Wednesday July 16, 2008 BT has pledged to bring super-fast broadband to 10m homes within four years by spending £1.5bn on a new fibre-optic network. 985@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
BT has pledged to bring super-fast broadband to 10m homes within four years by spending £1.5bn on a new fibre-optic network.

- Plan to connect 10m homes within four years
- Proposal demands Ofcom allows better returns

In his first major act since becoming BT's chief executive in April, Ian Livingston undertook yesterday to transform "Broadband Britain".

The optic-fibre network will be more than 10 times faster than the broadband provided over BT's copper lines. At a time when the success of the BBC iPlayer is putting pressure on internet service providers (ISPs), it could allow families to watch high-definition movies over the web and play bandwidth-hungry interactive online games at the same time.

With only 40% of households likely to benefit, the gap between Britain's fastest and slowest web surfers will increase, although BT rejects claims of a new broadband divide, promising also to increase the speed of its basic broadband package.

And the plan will go ahead only if the regulator Ofcom agrees to allow BT higher profit margins when it charges ISPs to use its new network.

Ofcom welcomed the announcement and said it would be publishing detailed proposals on its regulatory framework for the next generation of broadband but stopped short of commenting on BT's hopes of improving its profits.

Livingston freely admitted that the company did not know where BT would lay the fibre, saying it was keen to hear from local authorities and "those who can demonstrate real demand".

Most of the rollout will be fibre-to-the-kerb, with a fibre link from the core network to the nearest BT cabinet. That will mean speeds of up to 40 megabits a second - five times faster than the theoretical maximum BT offers today. But 3m of the homes targeted will be new-builds, where BT will lay a fibre-optic cable all the way to the front door. They would be promised headline speeds of 100Mbps.

Virgin Media has also promised super-fast broadband, offering speeds of up 50Mbps this year.

Conscious of the criticism it faced several years ago when broadband was largely restricted to urban areas, BT insisted that less populated areas may soon enjoy the taste of fibre. "I don't imagine that this will just be a big-cities thing," said Livingston. "We want to make this available in towns, cities and rural areas."

Ben Verwaayen, Livingston's predecessor, played a significant role in the development of broadband by slashing prices soon after joining BT in 2002.

When pressed on whether the fibre plan was his idea or Verwaayen's, Livingston - who used to run BT's retail arm - said that the board had been mulling the plan for some time but speeded up its work in recent weeks.

"We do feel that now is the time to be bold," said Livingston, who believes that the rising cost of petrol will encourage more people to use video-conferencing services rather than driving to a meeting. He even suggested that the troubles of the building industry could keep down the cost of laying cables.

Since being launched just over six months ago, the iPlayer has become so popular that some broadband connections are reduced to a virtual crawl at peak times. BT is spending more to increase its network capacity but suggested yesterday that the fault also lay with ISPs that did not buy enough bandwidth to cope.

It is also planning to offer a faster flavour of its current broadband, called ADSL2+, to everyone in the UK by 2012. That should mean speeds of 10Mbps - fast enough to watch high-definition television - for the majority of the population.

"We will deliver a sea of fast broadband, with islands of super-fast broadband," said a BT spokesman.

About £500m has already been set aside to invest in fibre. The remaining £1bn is new, and will partly come from the suspension of its share-buyback programme.

Some analysts question whether £1.5bn is enough to reach 10m households. But it is BT's insistence on concessions from Ofcom that prompted the most interest.

BT is allowed to make only a 10% return selling access to its network to other ISPs. It already wants to charge more for local-loop unbundling and is determined to improve margins in return for investing in fibre.

"We need to be able to demonstrate that we can make a better return for shareholders than putting the money in the bank," said one insider.
]]> 2008-07-16T16:23:02-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P984 The surge is at best a crime-cutting exercise. It is the promise of Obama and disengagement that really concentrates minds. Simon Jenkins The Guardian, Wednesday July 16, 2008 wrote the following: 984@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Simon Jenkins The Guardian, Wednesday July 16, 2008 wrote the following:

The best way to end a war is to forget it. As the Afghan conflict erupts in all its predictable horror, Iraq slithers towards forgetfulness. The question is how to hasten it on its way. Next week Barack Obama arrives in Europe, where he is lauded as the next American president. As such he carries an alarming burden of expectation, central to which is his pledge to end the occupation of Iraq.

He has always been opposed to this war, writing in the New York Times this week that Iraq "posed no threat and had nothing to do with 9/11". He promises to withdraw American forces "within 16 months", though he has reasonably added that the timetable may change as a result of his forthcoming visit to Baghdad - hardly the derided "flip-flop".

Only die-hard neocons (now including Obama's opponent, John McCain) still believe a US army should remain on Iraqi soil indefinitely. Where strategy diverges is over the modality of withdrawal. Central to this is the interpretation of the year-old "surge" of General Petraeus, whose ability to snatch good news from a catalogue of catastrophe has elevated him to the rank of genius.

The surge is much misread. It has involved pouring 20,000 extra troops into forward operating bases in central and western Baghdad, mostly Sunni areas. As a result, a formerly mixed city has been segregated into fortified enclaves as in Jerusalem and Belfast. Neighbourhoods have been flooded with armour, and soldiers embedded in each community. Not surprisingly, there has been a relative decline in lawlessness and violence, though they remain devastatingly high.

As long as the surge is judged by casualties, its success will be measurable. But assessment is confused because it coincides with a different innovation, the "awakening" in the Sunni Anbar province, initiated by the US marines a full year before the surge. It stimulated a shift in local power that has brought some stability to Sunni Iraq and diminished the running Shia-Sunni civil war.

In an extensive survey of withdrawal options in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, the American Middle East analyst Steven Simon points out that the awakening resulted from a realisation on the part of Sunni tribal leaders that they were losing local control to incoming al-Qaida units, who presented themselves as Sunni saviours against the Americans and Shia security forces.

Fed by a revulsion against al-Qaida, Sunni leaders eventually turned to the Americans, who responded with money and weapons to the former Sunni militias, known as "Sons of Iraq" and now numbering some 90,000. Fighters received $360 a month and a local chief could earn $100,000 a year in skim for fielding a unit of 200 men. Some $200m from American taxpayers vanished into Ramadi alone in just six months of 2007.

But such astronomical sums were not enough. Crucial to the Sunnis' change of tack was that they knew the Americans were leaving. They saw Washington moving towards the Democrats and withdrawal. "They talked about it all the time," recalls an American commander, also reported in Foreign Affairs, who told them: "We don't know when we are leaving, but we don't have much time."

Analysis in the latest Military Review concurs: "A growing concern that the US would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenceless against al-Qaida and the Iranian-supported militias made the younger leaders open to our overtures." In other words, while the surge yielded important reductions in crime, it was the awakening and its reading of American politics that was politically crucial.

At this point the strategists diverge. To the fast-withdrawal group, it was the threat of self-reliance that yielded results. It forced the Sunnis to reassert themselves against al-Qaida, rebuild militias and negotiate more confidently with the Shias round the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Progress depended on the dynamic of withdrawal for its bite.

Further evidence is drawn from Basra in the south. For all the controversy over Britain's withdrawal to base, it worked. The intervention by Iraqi forces in April brought home to local leaders that they were on their own against the Mahdists, and had better fight or hack deals.

The fast-withdrawers want this principle extended to the rest of Iraq. To them "unconditional disengagement" is the only goad to political reform. Maliki must reach an oil revenue deal with the Kurds and Sunnis, resolve the status of Kirkuk and somehow incorporate the regional militias into his Iraqi army. At present, with an American blank cheque on his desk and a Republican candidate promising to stay "for a hundred years", Maliki has no incentive to do any of these, even if he fobs off his radicals with a demand for a "withdrawal timetable" and the ending of the green zone.

Against this strategy stands the slow-withdrawal group. They see the surge remaining in place, notionally conditional on pressing Maliki to conciliate the Kurds and Sunnis. Such "conditional engagement" means a continued American presence to "shock-absorb" change, and a continued splurge of aid. Above all, the gains of the surge must not be put at risk by precipitate withdrawal.

In reality this is a static strategy that denies the dynamic incentive of unconditional withdrawal. Ardent advocates admit it has not worked so far, and its bluff can always be called by those crying "After us, the deluge", including the Babel of concerns with a financial interest in a US presence. The evidence of the past two years is that Maliki and his colleagues, awash with corruption, won't negotiate the necessary alliances until they know the occupation is emphatically ending. Conditional engagement means indefinite engagement.

The Iraq war was never going to end until Americans tired of it. Obama embodies that tiredness. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, and has been told he cannot have two wars at once. Now he has a strategy for withdrawal, and evidence as to how it might work. The awakening remains high risk. Some see arming the militias as a reckless prelude to resumed civil war, while leaving Maliki to fend for himself might just see him fall.

But the British withdrawal from Basra, the segregation of Baghdad and the awakening in Anbar have shown that imminent withdrawal concentrates minds and shifts political plates. It has begun the partitioning of Iraq into self-securing provinces, and has formed power structures on which new leadership can be built. In this desperate country, still among the most dangerous on earth, disengagement's hour has come. Obama is its harbinger.
]]> 2008-07-16T16:21:08-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P979 SESSION ENTITLED “MIGRANT WORKERS AND THE NEW WORKING CLASS” 11.45 – 1.00 PM 979@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
“MIGRANT WORKERS AND THE NEW WORKING CLASS”

11.45 – 1.00 PM

SATURDAY 5TH JULY 2008

SOAS, THORNHAUGH STREET, RUSSELL SQUARE, LONDON WC1H (BRUNEI)

It is always a pleasure to address Marxism, and this is a particular pleasure because we are addressing one of the key problems facing the workers’ movement.



The composition and structure of the working class is changing.



From the viewpoint of trade unionists, and from the viewpoint of socialists, we have to adapt our policies and our organisation to serve the new working class.





________________________________________



Before addressing the issue of migrant workers, I need to stress that the biggest change is one we still take for granted.



Women make up the majority of the population. The majority of women are in paid employment. The majority of trade union members in Britain are women.



Yet women’s wages and pensions remain inferior to men. And women remain under represented in the positions of power in all social institutions, including trade unions and socialist organisations.



The recent defeat of attempts to reduce women’s abortion rights was an important success.



It showed that a coalition can be formed in support of women’s rights between the women’s movement and the labour movement.

________________________________________



The CWU is proud to support the work of Abortion Rights, and pay tribute to the many socialist women who have sustained this campaign.



There is a great deal do. I am pleased that the Unions affiliated to the Labour Party have prioritised the policy of compulsory equal pay audits in the negotiations around the Manifesto debates for the National Policy Forum later this month.



I think the one Union in Britain which offers them most radical experience of the impact of women’s new and permanent place in the workforce is Unison.



Unison has one million women members.







________________________________________



It was the Union that has pioneered, and most effectively carried through, the policy of proportionality and leadership bodies.



There is much that every Union, and socialist, can learn from the Unison experience.



Certainly, under representation remains a pressing problem. Yet how can the leadership of the working class represent the working class if it doesn’t look like it?



Equally, of course, there is a problem of the under representation of black workers and ethnic minorities.



These questions are not incidental. They are central because they reflect the structural changes inside the working class.



________________________________________



9% of the population are from ethnic minorities. We know that the black communities suffer from systematic discrimination under capitalism. As a consequence, the labour market itself is segregated.



For policy purposes, the workers and socialist movement must draw out all the conclusions from this. You cannot turn the world upside down, without raising the position of the most oppressed.



This is particularly important in Britain. Here we have the capitalist class that ran large parts of the world for centuries.



It has acquired vast wealth, and vast political experience. It is not going to be turned over through some nicely written propaganda.





________________________________________



British Imperialism has operated on a hegemonic basis.



It has organised its power through all the institutions of society - including through the workers organisations.



So we have to have a policy which raises the independent powers of all the workers and oppressed in society.



We have to avoid the trap of having a line for the labour aristocracy in the working class. We want policies which cover the whole of the working class. Not just a favoured few.



According to the OECD, real wages growth in OECD countries grew by 3% to 5% annually in the 1960s.





________________________________________



Since 1979, real wages growth has been around 1% a year in Europe and Japan, and slightly less in the USA.



That’s the first point - the workers share of the national income has declined.



But within this, there is a difference emerged in the most liberalised economies like the US, UK and Australia - compared to most EU countries.



In most EU countries, wage differentials between the middle and bottom wage earners have not grown. But in the US and UK they have grown.



Of course, this growing disadvantage of the lower earners, disproportionately affects women workers, and migrant workers.



________________________________________



So, our policy has to be to raise the living standards of all, and defeat attempts to divide the working class.



During the 1980s, living standards for those in work rose. The Tories understood that you can reduce social tension, by judicious concessions a section of the working class.



I well remember the UCW postal pay negations in 1984.



We were preparing for a strike, when suddenly management made a concession. The national negotiators seized this - it was more than 1% above the going rate. They assumed this was a testament to their negotiating skill. This was in the middle of the Miners Strike.





________________________________________



Now, finally to return to migrant workers. It is decisive that we organise and support the struggle of migrant workers. This is crucial to providing a safety net for the living standards of the entire working class, and migrant workers themselves.



Last year, during the postal strikes, we produced leaflets in Polish to prevent casual workers being used on strike days. Branches recruited casual workers with these leaflets. It was an important reminder, that unions must change and adapt to be successful.



Remember, the British trade unions became involved with Marx and Engals in the First International, primarily because the International offered them a way of preventing foreign labour being imported to break strikes in Britain.





________________________________________



Today, organising migrant workers in the workplace, and in the communities, is a key task.



We see the continued promotion of racism, and particularly Islamaphobia, in Britain by sections of the establishment through the media and politicians.



Working class organisation has to be a strong point for migrant workers against such bigotry.



The whole debate about migration, of course, bears a poisonous character, and has little to do with the actual needs of the political economy.



In 1798, Malthus produced his first book explaining his law of population.



This law stated that population growth inevitably exceeds food supply.

________________________________________



This leads to over population, hunger and misery, especially for the poor.



It is amazing how often we still hear variance of this nonsense. –



Supposedly there are too many people in the world. -



Supposedly Africa is starving because there are too many Africans



Indeed, this idea continues to be utilised by racists today as an argument against general human progress.



But, at the time of Malthus’s writing, the first comprehensive census was carried out, in 1801.





________________________________________



Due to colonialism, the population of Great Britain and Ireland were counted together. A total population of just over 16 million people.



Today the combined population of the UK and the Irish State is just over 65 million.



Can anyone seriously suggest that quadrupling of the population has resulted in a massive drop in living standards?



Of course not - for people, and particularly the labouring power of people, is the source of all wealth.



Humans do not just consume - we produce too.



The backward position of the racists is not just one of bigotry.



________________________________________



It is the fact that migration is a force for social progress - and the bigots opposition to immigration slows down the expansion of societies productive forces.


One interesting feature of the way in which migration is debated is that it is so one-sided.


The only side of the equation examined is immigration. What about emigration?


In the decade between 1997 and 2006 - the Office of National Statistics estimated that 1.97 million people emigrated from Britain.


Now these two million people are the subject of no demands, or no abuse.


They didn’t have to learn Spanish or Bulgarian in order to live there. –

________________________________________


They were not forced to leave their capital or income that they have built up in this country.


In fact, we are sorry to see them go - according to David Davis - former Shadow Secretary of the Tories before he became a Liberal superhero.


He said “this explosion in emigration is inevitably a reflection of the state of the country under a Labour Government”.


Which presumably means that you wouldn’t to be able to afford to leave under the Tories - much as you would like to go.


Thanks for listening.]]> 2008-07-05T11:55:37-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P980 The privatisation tide is turning, from Wellington to Caracas, but public intervention has to be at the cutting edge as well Seumas Milne The Guardian, Thursday July 3, 2008 980@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ Seumas Milne The Guardian, Thursday July 3, 2008

Full Story

]]> 2008-07-03T16:22:51-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P982 Israel's treatment of an award-winning young Palestinian journalist is part of a terrible pattern All comments () John Pilger The Guardian, Wednesday July 2, 2008 982@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ All comments ()
John Pilger The Guardian, Wednesday July 2, 2008

Full Story]]> 2008-07-02T16:25:58-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P981 High-paid executives worried by change in Europe can take solace from Labour - here they are still untouchable All comments (69) John Harris The Guardian, Wednesday July 2, 2008 981@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ All comments (69)
John Harris The Guardian, Wednesday July 2, 2008

Full story]]> 2008-07-02T16:24:43-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P977 My speech to the above. 977@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Bristol

What I intend to do is to firstly summarise the position of the CWU in the postal industry, including our recent dispute. Then I will explain how the CWU is positioning itself in the
broader political context.

The postal industry has recently undergone a long expansion. In fact between 1979 and 2001, the industry grew slightly faster than GDP.

Despite talk of being replaced by telephones, fax, and the internet, the industry complemented the other media in the communications revolution.

During this period the Union’s postal branches became very strong local bargaining units, based on nationally established framework agreements.

After the miners’ strike, the postal workers have been responsible for more disputes than any other group of workers.

The fact of the industry’s expansion, and the monopoly position of the industry, gave postal Union activists an advantage which they rightly exploited.

Throughout this period, a new generation of leaders emerged at local, and then national levels. This led to a left majority in the national leadership from around the mid 1990s.

2001 was something of a turning point. It was the first year that expansion in letters volume began to disconnect with GDP growth. It was the year that the new management team around Alan Leighton began operations.

And it was also the year that the left won the General Secretary’s position of the Union.

Having gone through national strikes in 1987, around the shorter working week; 1998, around the issue of national pay bargaining; and in 1996, around team working, the national leadership of the Union had claim to considerable experience.

The new conditions have tested this severely.

Firstly, when the left won the DGS postal position in 2003, there was momentum amongst the activists for an immediate dispute.

This stumbled when a national strike ballot on pay was lost. There was some immediate recovery, in so far as there was a positive result in the London Weighting strike ballot. There followed some serious official and unofficial action. Although a lot of ground was recovered, some was certainly lost.

In 2004, Royal Mail management announced a campaign to privatise Royal Mail, asking Government to agree a 51% share flotation.

The CWU organised a serious campaign against this, including getting a commitment in the Warwick Agreement and getting a commitment in Labour’s 2005 Election Manifesto, not to privatise Royal Mail.

Despite this result, Royal Mail management continued their campaign. Immediately after the 2005 election results, management sought to have agreed a 20% share flotation to staff members. Obviously a precursor to a later share flotation on the stock market.

The CWU continued and intensified its campaign against this proposal. Through a series of political initiatives, the CWU was successful when Government, in January 2007, announced that it had rejected managements proposals.

Managements policy had been thrown into crisis. The fundamental problem facing the industry, and one which had not been addressed since 2001, was under investment in the industry.

As a consequence, the industry was lagging behind potential competitors in a liberalised market. Royal Mail machine sorts around 55% of its mail, in comparison which Dutch and German post offices mechanically sorting over 90% of their mail.

Management had not addressed the problem of investment, as it assumed that it was going to get the industry privatised in the near future, and hence assumed a future injection of private capital.

The Government agreed in 2006 and 2007 substantial investment loans with the company. But management had additionally seriously underestimated its likely losses through the early introduction of competition in Britain.

Hence, at the start of 2007, Royal Mail management, having been beaten by the Union in its lobbying of Government, faced a crisis of policy which it attempted to resolve by turning upon the Union and the workforce.

At the start of 2007, management was saying that there would be no substantial wage rise and that there would be no substantial negotiations with the Union on the next generation of automation, and the rationalisation of the industry.

As you will know, the CWU organised a strike ballot, and organised a series of national strikes. These involved 130,000 workers taking part in 8 to 9 days action during the summer.

A settlement was reached which, amongst other things, gave postal workers an increase of 5.4% on the hourly rate on October 1st and guaranteed the Union’s negotiating rights on the introduction of new machinery and the rationalisation issues.

Today, it is clear that the Union has come out of 2007 in good shape. The left leader of the postal section was re-elected unopposed in 2008. The Union’s 2008 Conference endorsed the leadership’s line going forward unanimously, and threats to the Union’s political orientation were marginalised at Conference.

Just as well, because the Union is preparing for its third serious campaign against privatisation of Royal Mail.

The first being the defeat of Heseltine’s Bill in the 1990s. The second as I have described in 2004-2007.

Today, both the Regulator of Postcom and Royal Mail management, are proposing privatisation to the Government Convened Review of Postal Liberalisation.

We are preparing our campaign against, including an agreement reached with the other two main Unions, in preparation for the Warwick Two Negotiations which will take place in July, leading up to Labour’s National Policy Forum at the end of July.

Our tactics in this are based on how we position ourselves in the wider political sense.

We continue to maintain the Trade Union as a part of the broad struggle for social progress.

We are affiliated to the Labour Party, although as critical comrades.

We are affiliated to a wide range of political campaigns – for example Abortion Rights, CND, National Assembly Against Racism, Palestine Solidarity, Stop the War Coalition, Unite Against Facism etc.

But we are very conscious of the difficult situation Unions and the Socialist movement face on a national and international level.

Hence we are trying to reposition the Union in line with the changes in society and the workforce.

To start with, we note that Union membership declined by over 40% since 1979. At the same time too, the percentage of the workforce covered by collective agreements has declined from around 70% to around 30%.

The sharp decline under the Tories, has been arrested since 1997. But if we have stopped the decline, with more favourable legislation from the Labour Government, we have not yet resumed growth.

So we face the danger of stagnation, which if allowed to happen would inevitably lead to further decline.

In our view, the Unions have yet to fully embrace the changes needed to resume growth.

Of course, it is not just a question of will. The big growth of the Unions has been historically conditioned. For example, the long boom after World War II allowed for Unions to take advantage of the relatively tight labour market.

But the Unions have to fully grasp the significance of the changes in the composition and organisation of the workforce in order to take the openings available.

Most notable of these is the complete absorption of women into the labour market.

Women form the majority of the population. The majority of women are in paid employment. The majority of Trade Union members in Britain today are women.

Yet there remains a 17% gender gap in the pay of full time workers, and a 36% gap between male full time workers and a female part time worker.

Clearly then Unions have not yet successfully addressed this decisive question.

Doubtless this is not unrelated to the fact that the Unions are also a long way from achieving proportionality in the composition of their leadership, at local and national levels.

Unison is a notable exception with a leadership composed of a majority of women. But Unison has a million women members – how long will it take the rest of the Unions to achieve such a radical change?

A change of equal significance is the growth of ethnic minorities, around 9% of the population so defined.

Issues ranging across racism, labour migration, religious observance, are now a central part of the modern Unions agenda.

Of course, along the same lines, we have to address issues facing lesbian and gay workers, workers with disabilities, and so on.

How far the Unions are able to solve problems with policy and organisation around these questions will define our future growth.

There is also the fact that many young workers have no experience or sense of Union tradition. And that the educative role of the Labour movement has become marginalised.

The CWU supports initiatives like the TUC’s organising academy. We also have organisers in the CWU specifically to open up new areas of organisation for the Union.

But we know that the big shift of workers into the Unions is unlikely to come simply through such initiatives. Any more than the revival of a broader socialist movement in Britain will simply come through a few propaganda pamphlets.

We can hold the ground, and prepare for a future growth in the Trade Unions and Socialist Movement.

Today such an option does not involve standing still. The grounds of society are shifting - whatever the clichés, globalisation is involving some far reaching changes.

Our ambition is to ensure that the Unions play their part in shaping these changes.
]]> 2008-06-27T10:14:22-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P975 For the July issue of Socialist Campaign Group News. 975@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Once again the public, and the CWU, is facing a battle around attempts to privatise Royal Mail.

In submissions to the Government convened review of the postal sector, both the industry’s Regulator (Postcomm) and Royal Mail’s management have made submissions calling for the privatisation of Royal Mail.

The CWU is engaged in the debate in the review around these issues, and strongly opposes privatisation. In the coming months we will be undertaking a variety of political initiatives to set back these proposals.

The proposal from Postcomm is particularly galling. The policy of the regulator was to allow complete liberalisation of the mail market with no adequate protection offered to Royal Mail, which is the sole provider of the universal service in the UK.

The universal service guarantees a daily collection and delivery for all citizens at genuinely accessible service points, with a uniformly priced stamp tariff.

Providing such a service requires a large capital network to ensure complete geographic coverage.

Royal Mail has daily collections from one hundred and fifteen thousand pillar boxes, and thirteen thousand Post Offices. The daily delivery over six days goes to over twenty eight million addresses. Royal Mail has one hundred and sixty seven thousand employees. It has sixty nine mail centres, fourteen hundred delivery offices and a national distribution hub. It has a fleet of thirty one thousand vehicles, two trains and undertakes forty two flights a day.

No competitor is about to make a comparable investment. Hence the competition has been very segregated. The Regulator has introduced a system of ‘access’ which allows competitors to part-sort and trunk the mail to Royal Mail offices for delivery via Royal Mail.

The result is that competition has creamed off 40% of Royal Mail’s highly profitable business mail in ‘access’. Yet competition is delivering 0.2% of this mail.

Royal Mail revenues have plummeted, whilst its costs have remained relatively stable. As a result Royal Mail is facing an anticipated short-fall in revenue of £2.6b in its business plan.

The figure is so large because the Regulator has kept the access price deliberately low to encourage competition. Actually this has led to Royal Mail subsidising the competition.

Having brought Royal Mail to financial crisis, Postcomm now proposes to hide its failure by having Royal Mail privatised.

Royal Mail management organised a campaign between 2004-7 to have the company privatised. The CWU’s campaign resulted in a defeat for management’s proposal. But now management feel comfortable jumping on the back of Postcomm’s proposal.

The most senior figures in management all have a back-ground in the private sector. They know that privatisation would result in substantial share allocations in future, on top of their not inconsiderable current bonuses and salaries.

But in these calculations there is no estimation of the cost for customers or postal workers.

Yet the future can be clearly spelled out from the experience of other privatisations.

The service will become more expensive and ever more segregated, favouring large business customers over domestic customers. The universal service will be reduced to the minimum.

Postal workers will face job losses, wage cuts, out-sourcing, insecurity, and a greater rate of exploitation.

Clearly there is much at stake in the fight for the Union. Already the Union has commenced its campaign.

In our submissions to the Review, we have demonstrated that Royal Mail can be properly financed in the public sector. At present our products are being exchanged at below their value. Postcomm’s insistence on holding down prices below inflation has to be overturned.

In addition, the competitors, who use Royal Mail’s network, must also pay towards the upkeep of the universal service. At present they receive a benefit of the universal service free.

The CWU will be placing before the Party’s NPF, the need to reassert the Government’s commitment not to privatise Royal Mail. TULO is supporting this position, and we expect Ministers to uphold the promise that was made to the Electorate in the 2005 Manifesto.

In the coming months, we will be organising support inside the PLP, and the wider Labour movement. Keeping Royal Mail in the public sector offers the best chance of maintaining a comprehensive network of Post Office Branches. We aim to convince the Government, and the whole of the Labour movement, that a publicly owned postal service is not only best for customers, but also electorally popular too.]]> 2008-06-26T15:36:46-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P961 “It’s a year on since our last fringe meeting on organising and there have been some changes. 961@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
John has got his feet under the table and I know he’s working on some new ideas and innovations. And Andy will soon be taking up his position as DGS Telecoms – well done and good luck Andy. As most of you know in the room, Andy has always taken a keen interest in organising and in working with John to improve our strategic approach; I think we have a formidable duo to drive Telecoms organising forward across the industrial landscape.



A few brief points I’d like to make:



· I’d like to thank John, Lynn and the Organising Dept. for the work their doing in the postal sector. The challenges we face in the future are formidable and it’s absolutely critical that we lay the foundations for those challenges now rather than wait ‘till it’s too late.



· We’ve been talking a good game on organising for some time now without putting the resources behind the department to truly fulfil our aspirations. At the moment we have 5 second year trainees from the Academy and 3 first year candidates; you’ll here from Kerry and Michelle later. We can no longer afford to spend scare resources on Academy organisers and then allow them to be poached by other unions. These organisers are a key component of our strategy if the CWU is to survive and not be swallowed up into one of the super unions.

· I mentioned Kerry before. Kerry is our first Academy Organiser in Northern Ireland and I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing her success over the coming years. 150% will do us Kerry.



I’ve just about said enough. We live in dangerous times. The spectre of another Tory government is hanging over the country. David and his cronies sit in the opposition benches; yes they look sweeter than Thatcher and her architects of despair and destruction, but believe me, their made from exactly the same mould. We’ve all seen the legacy of the cult of the individual – remember what she said “There is no such thing as society”. As trade unionists we abhor that culture of selfishness and greed and are dedicated to not only taking the CWU message out to our brothers and sisters in the communications industry but rebuilding our communities and defending the dignity of ordinary working people.


]]> 2008-06-11T09:22:33-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P970 (Tuesday 10 June - 16.45 to 17.25) 970@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
BILLY HAYES – OPPOSE

Conference earlier today you set your policy on this question when you defeated motion 101 and carried motion 102.

This motion doesn’t mention affiliation, or disaffiliation. That seems dishonest.

Because if we carried the motion into policy we would have to disaffiliate, or be expelled from the Party.

You cannot support another party and the Labour Party. The Rules are entirely clear – as the RMT found out.

They affiliated to the Scottish Socialist Party. The Labour NEC found this was incompatible with affiliation to the Labour Party.

This is not unreasonable, the SSP was standing candidates against Labour, and was out to replace the Labour Party.

The RMT refused to end its support for the SSP, and was expelled from the Labour Party.

It all ended badly for the RMT. The SSP split in 2006, and the RMT refused to support either side of the split.

So the RMT gave up a hundred year relationship with the Party of Government, for a three year relationship with an opposition party which broke up.

Those who don’t learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

There is a lot in the motion about last year’s postal dispute. We carried out our action despite the position of Ministers.

Affiliation does not stop us standing up for CWU members, including by industrial action when we need it.

The motion said we can support candidates who oppose the privatisation of the Post Office, support the Trade Union Freedom Bill and oppose an attack upon Iran.

Is that the limit of our policies, or our political ambitions?

Anyone who promotes this tiny platform can receive CWU money? Knowing that, quite a lot of politicians would say they support it.

If you pass this, we will get expelled from the Labour Party – for certain.

If you pass this, CWU money could go to any party, except the fascists. Branches could finance candidates from any party you care to name, candidates who’d trim for the money, and let us down.

This motion would turn our policy into chaos, and you must reject it.

]]> 2008-06-10T16:45:56-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P973 (Tuesday 10 June - 15.45 to 16.45) 973@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Conference, to ask you to reject the hardy annual motion of disaffiliation.

This motion starts by implying that there’s no difference between a Tory administration and a Labour administration.

Well, in a month and a half, Johnson’s administration in London has ripped up equalities policies, environmental policies and subsidised fares policies.

And he’s appointed a union-buster as his deputy. Does it make a difference? Seven million Londoners are finding it that it does.

The motion ought to be embarrassing to the Branches concerned.

We are told of a failure to influence Labour Party policies on key issues such as ‘the position of agency workers’.

The comrades have missed the deal that various bosses organisations described as ‘a cosy stitch up’, ‘a disastrous deal’ and ‘a bad deal for the country’.

That’s how our enemies view this major achievement – which this Union played no small part in bringing about.

What about the public ownership of telecoms and the postal industry? Its true that telecoms has not been nationalised, but is anyone surprised? Surely we see this as a long term question?

Royal Mail remains in the public sector – and we are fighting to ensure that the Government keeps to its policy – promised in the Manifesto.

Or are the Branches in the composite unaware of this policy?

Conference, I can only guess that we have in front of us such a bad motion because the Branches concerned assume we should have finished with the Labour Party long ago. That being the case, it doesn’t matter what the Government does or doesn’t do anyway.

Instead we are supposed to start up a new party.

This is, of course, another way of saying that there isn’t an alternative party that the CWU could support.

As there isn’t an alternative – then I suggest we continue our current policy.

Where the Government carries out a policy we agree with – then we support the Government.

Where the Government carries out a policy we oppose – then we campaign against it.

Motion 101 offers us a completely ineffective isolation – and you need to reject that.

]]> 2008-06-10T15:45:56-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P974 (Tuesday 10 June – 1530 hrs) 974@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
This week there has been a good deal of media interest about the decisions of this conference.

Our experience as a trade union – we create the news.

Newspaper owners decide what their agenda is and try to make us fit into it.

So the news is the CWU rather than simply the Labour Party

How about CWU gathers to defend pensions in Royal Mail and BT. CWU gathers to defend the workers of Fujitsu. The CWU gathers to defend workers at Burslem or even CWU continues its recruitment drive into unorganised telecoms companies.

Or how about our success in achieving agreement on the European Directive on the Agency Workers Bill. This could not have been done without the intelligent work of our activists.

That being the case – I’m going to dwell a bit longer than usual on our attitude and relationship to the Government.

To say we are not happy would be an understatement.

The CWU does not believe that cutting living standards of workers is a route to economic stability or prosperity.

So, yes, we think that the 2% wage limit in the public sector is damaging, unfair, and has got to end.

Equally, we think that the Government’s taxation policy must see the wealthy paying their share.

We cannot accept that the poor are paying a higher proportion of their income in tax than the wealthy.

There is nothing fair, or healthy, about city traders getting legendary bonuses whilst their office cleaners are on the minimum wage, and a temporary contract.

Growing inequality is not a force for social progress.

Today, inequality is a force for dangerous tensions in our communities.

We don’t accept that the private and voluntary sectors should be providing public services.

We think that directly, and securely employed workers, can best provide these services.

So we want – and are campaigning for – the Government to change its economic policies in the face of the serious slow down in the British economy.

Yesterday, you had an inspiring speech from Larry Cohen – a notable worker’s leader from the United States. He outlined his union’s opposition to his Government’s occupation in Iraq. This is in keeping with our policy the sooner British troops come home the better.

Instead of waiting for the result of the US Presidential Elections, the Prime Minister should be following the lead of the Australian Labour Prime Minister – Kevin Rudd – who is withdrawing all Australian personnel from Iraq.

As a Union the help found the Labour Party and was disaffiliated by Winston Churchill the infamous Trades Disputes Act of 1927 and fought for the right to be re-affiliated for 20 years. We understand serious social progress has been as a result of our relationship with the Party. This does not mean that we are glove puppet for the Government.

The toffs are back and however nice they smile, whether that be Cameron or Clegg, we know they won’t look after the interests of working people.

Along with our Labour affiliated unions, we will be pressing for a change of direction in Labour’s National Policy Forum, and it’s Election Manifesto.

Larry Cohen spoke of the need for an army of stewards to promote the trade unions. This is important. Jack Jones has first raised some years ago the need for a new shop stewards movement.

Some weeks ago I attended an awards ceremony in Liverpool for a man called Ray Hilton. Ray has been a union rep for 39 years. In this coming year we need to develop a set of minimum standards for reps. We need to equip them with the tools to do their jobs. Let’s make this coming year the year of the front line rep.

A renewed growth of direct organisation and bargaining in the workplace is a key to our future.

In 1979 there were over 12 million trade unionists in Britain today there are 6.5 million. If you are in a union it matters how many other workers are in a union. If 90% of the workers are in a trade union in a country like Sweden that means all unions are stronger. If only 35% are in a union that makes it harder for you to bargain. That is why the work we are doing on unionising in all the sectors matters. In particular our early work in the Postal sector will grow in importance. Just look at the impact of the Postal minimum wage in Germany. Where workers in Deutche Poste had their bargaining position improved by a sector wide agreement.

Since Labour was elected in 1997 – because of some of the concessions the trade union’s secured – this decline has stopped.

But rather than grow – the collective weight of the trade unions has remained roughly the same.

We have stopped declining.

Our challenge has to be to restore growth.

History would suggest this will happen – when a new generation of young workers takes hold of the unions.

This week we have seen the signs of this.

Simon Sapper has done a great job building our Youth organisation.

But every Branch – and every forward looking activists in this hall – must set themselves the task of bringing on young workers in their Branch in the coming year.

Set aside something from your branch budgets to bring this about – every penny spent on youth development is assure investment in the future growth of this union.

Unions are changing.

Women form a majority of the population in this country. The majority of women are in paid employment. And the majority of trade unionists in the UK today are women.

Yet still women are unrepresented in almost every trade union – and certainly in the CWU.

If our leadership – whether at national or branch level – does not look like the workforce then we cannot say that it is completely representative.

At the 2004 Rules Revision Conference, we adapted Rules which made the achievement of proportionality an aim for both the national union and the union’s branches.

This week we had a debate about the Standing Orders Committee. Yet in the very same week on the issue of proportionality we went backwards. This is not to take anything away from those who have been elected. And I offer my congratulations to them. But there is something deeply wrong that this year we have not elected women to the SOC – that cannot be right.

I said in my speech to Rules Revision Conference this year, that there are structural reforms that we need to discuss widely amongst the activists.

I hope many of you will see the need to update and open up our structure to changes.

Let’s debate topics like:

• How can we connect with workers who are unorganised, or have little tradition of organisation?
• How much we change our branches to provide effective bargaining and continuing support to members?
• How can we recreate a sense of a labour moment which provides development and education for workers?

I know the Communications team will approve – how can we develop a system of communication which is modern – interactive – rapid – imaginative and responsive for our members? Surely we’ll be learning from young members here.

But also we need you – the activists – to build upon initiatives like CWU TV.

Or – let me give you a couple of problems.

Because of homophobia in our society, there are not generally agreed calculations of lesbian and gay people.

Older studies suggested this applied to approximately one in twenty people.

Some more recent studies have suggested the figure could be as high as one in ten people are lesbian or gay.

But no one knows for sure.

So – we want to increase the circulation of Out Talk in the CWU.

The number of LGBT members of the CWU may by these measures be as high as 25,000. Or it may be perhaps 12 to 13,000.

But that is a lot of members who are not currently receiving the material we are directly addressing to them.

How can we ensure these members actually get to see Out Talk?

Recently we mailed out the most recent issue of Women’s Talk to the homes of women members on our data base.

So we are confident, that for the first time, we have delivered our women’s journal to the 20% of CWU members who are women.

Now we have to work to encourage women members to writing for, and contributing to the development of Women’s Talk.

But for our Black members we have no such easy solution.

Our ethnic monitoring data is extremely incomplete – and there is no easy way to complete it.

How can we ensure that all our Black members actually get to see a copy of Drum – our journal for Black members.

As the workforce has changed we need to adapt our Union to these changes.

So these are some of the problems we have to solve – this year we have a new team: Davie Bowman takes over Presidency. Linda Roy – Equal Opportunities, Colin O’Callaghan Assistant Secretary Telecoms. Of course Dave Ward, Bob Gibson and Dave Joyce have been re-elected. And we have new comers to the NEC: Katrina Quirk, Fred Simpson and Gary Heather together with Andy Gibb, Dave Jukes joining the T&FS. And there are people leaving our organisation: Karen Turley, Phil Bowman, Carmel McCudden, Bill McClory and Michele Emerson – all have served the Union well.

Have all served the Union well and of course, this has been the year of our first women President. Jane has done a remarkable job as President in a year when we were involved in the biggest postal dispute for at least a decade. Having known Jane for many years – she is a fighter. What has particularly impressed me – her ability to make her point in debate and then act on the collective decision of the Executive.

But I hope that all those who are leaving will forgive me touching on two people that have been special to me: Jeannie Drake – well DGS(T) she has been one of the most influential trade union leaders of her generation. She came up to the union movement when there was no equal pay act, when there was no sex discrimination act. Those were difficult times and she is a star. My Mother used to have a saying she didn’t get a full pension because she didn’t have a full stamp. It’s to Jeannie’s great credit for all women that she secured decent pensions for women of the future.

Finally, Dave Percival. Anyone that has worked eight years for me deserves an award in itself. Dave was one of the most modest, intelligent men I know. I first met Dave at a rank and file Post Office meeting and even though we used to. And he was the first person I ever saw speak at a UPW Conference when he was tackling the platform on some issue and in those days the platform won 98% of the time.

It always makes me smile when I see him shuffling down the Broadway with a copy of the Socialist Worker and the Racing Times. I’ll miss you Dave.

And finally, to thank all the delegates and the Merseyside Branches for making this Merseyside conference a special one.
]]> 2008-06-10T09:59:39-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P965 Firstly, my apologies for being unable to stay but I have another commitment to meet. It is important to restate the Union’s national commitment to the Stop the War Coalition, and the general Anti War Movement. 965@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/ It is important to restate the Union’s national commitment to the Stop the War Coalition, and the general Anti War Movement.

Nothing that has happened since 2003 can justify the catastrophe of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The statistics are chillingly familiar. Around one million Iraqis dead - a further two million fled abroad - and a further two million internal refugees.

As far as British foreign policy goes - the only comparable fiasco in living memory is the 1956 invasion of Egypt.

But although that was as complete a debacle as this war – it was much less bloody.

Iraq is the biggest humanitarian disaster of the 21st Century, so far. No amount of government spin can hide this.

So, ending the occupation, and allowing the people of Iraq to heal their mutilated country is the only way forward.

Staying and allowing the continued looting of Iraq’s oil industry, and other resources, will only deepen the problems facing the Iraqi people.

We demand that Gordon Brown reverses the current policy on Iraq.

Shortly before he became Prime Minister, we were led to believe that he was going to, in some way, adopt a more critical foreign policy towards the US than Tony Blair.

But his decision to stop the withdrawal of troops from Iraq is simply repeating Blair’s mistakes.

The US military “surge” has not improved anything in Iraq. Casualties against Iraqi civilians remain at appalling levels.

There is no sign that beefing up the military presence is making Iraq more politically stable either.

In reality, Gordon Brown is hanging on to find out who is going to win the US Presidential election. This is another expression of the collapse of an independent foreign policy.

Instead, Brown should follow the lead of the Australian Labour Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who has withdrawn Australian troops from Iraq.

This was electorally popular in Australia, and would be electorally popular in Britain too.

So - on behalf of the CWU NEC - I confirm our continued support, and hope you will ensure that your Branches and Regional Committees affiliate to, and actively support the campaign.

Thanks for listening.


]]> 2008-06-10T09:26:06-00:00 http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/rssfeed.php?id=P963 The Communication Workers Union has been at the forefront of fighting racism and tackling intolerance in society. – 963@http://www.billyhayes.co.uk/
Today is a special day in the history of the CWU - particularly from the perspective of having both Gee and Dominique Walker.

The Walker family has been a beacon of light and strength families in the United Kingdom and have shown the way in terms of how people should respect each other irrespective of colour, creed, religion, gender etc.
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Our union - via the Equal Opportunities department - has been closely following the work of the Anthony Walker Memorial Foundation, which has been launched specially to honour the young black man, whose life was brutally cut short in a racially motivated attack just a few miles from where we sit today. –

Antony was an exceptional student who had a brilliant career ahead of him –

he was also a very athletic young man who was a keen basketball player. –
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His other love was that of Arsenal Football Club and I understand that our union has arranged for both Gee and Dominique to attend a match at the Emirates Stadium, where they will be VIP guests of the club and the trip will be in honour of Anthony Walker.


Today follows on the heels of the Walker family’s connections with the trade union movement. –


____________________________

The National Union of Teachers have already shown a closeness with the Walker family and the AWMF that the CWU is looking to follow.

Our union is extremely proud of the CWU Black History Exhibition that we have built up over the last few years. –

This has proved to be an invaluable initiative, and has given the platform for people and organisations who have used our exhibition to gain some valuable education on Black history.
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I am very pleased to announce to the meeting that a profile of Anthony Walker has also been commissioned by the CWU and this has been sponsored by both the Race and Youth Advisory Committees. –

Anthony will take his place alongside the likes of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Mary Seacole and the CWU will help to ensure his memory, his life, is remembered for as long as ever.


____________________________

Trade unions have a duty to campaign and fight vigorously in the continued battle against fascism and general discriminative behaviour. –

We will support the principles of the Anthony Walker Memorial Trust by lobbying to enshrine a better type of attitude amongst our workers, for people to respect each other and to have maximum tolerance for each other. –


___________________________

We will work with organisations such as Unite Against Fascism and Searchlight to ensure this is done. –

We all have a duty to play an active part in this role and I urge every branch to do so.

******
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