Don't Mention the Peoples Charter!

With the owner of this blog currently laid up (get well soon MJ!) I thought I would pop by and offer some measured comment upon the Final Agenda for UNISON National Delegate Conference which has now hit the streets.

In view of the consequences of criticism of the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) in some cases I do want to make clear that nothing I say should be construed as an attack upon the SOC!

It is - as ever - I am sure just unfortunate coincidence that creates the appearance of some motions and amendments being ruled out of order for political reasons. This year the unfortunate coincidence has affected the topic of the Peoples Charter (supported of course by UNISON Scotland if not by the STUC).

A motion from Southwark branch was ruled out of order on the grounds that it was insufficiently clear (and not as I at first said in this post on the grounds that it breached the Rules on the Political Fund. (I was thinking of the Somerset motion which set out the details of the "People not Profit" Charter, and which was ruled out on those grounds). Tony Woodley and Paul Kenny have reportedly withdrawn their support for the Charter on the misconcieved grounds that it is a vehicle for disaffiliation from the Labour Party.

Amendments from the Islington and LFEPA branches which refer to supporting the Peoples Charter without rehearsing all of its contents have also been ruled out of order on the grounds that they are "not sufficiently clear".

I think that both the original motion and the amendments are quite clear. The Peoples Charter is now easy to find online and to read - and its contents are entirely consistent with UNISON Conference policy.

A cynic would think that it was imperative to prevent a Conference vote since its outcome would be to support the Charter...

This is precisely what was done in recent years to motions seeking support for the Public Services Not Private Profit Campaign, an impressive joint union mobilisation which organised (for example) a lobby of Parliament which was considerably better than that which the TUC did "officially".

This was also a topic on which the views of Conference could be predicted with some confidence - and which Conference was never therefore permitted to debate (I recollect being told that SOC were advised that the Campaign would have to be funded from our Political Fund - and therefore could not be discussed at Conference - on the basis that the main funders, PCS had paid for it from their Political Fund. This was at a time when PCS did not have a Political Fund!)

The SOC is an independent body but it is not immune from official influence, and from the view that UNISON doesn't really like joint campaigns it doesn't control, particularly if they are associated too closely with certain critics of the Government.

In the case of the Peoples Charter however, the Scottish Region has already taken a sensible and pragmatic line. I hope that the days of UNISON seeming to adopt a sectarian approach to genuine broad based labour movement campaigns are well and truly numbered.

We shall see.

Update on Wednesday evening.

I am indebted to a commentator in the comments box on this post for correcting an error I made above, I hope that I have made corrections whilst honestly acknowledging that error. The validity of the point I am making was not affected by that error.

What would prove that I was wrong would be if the leading members of the UNISON NEC were to propose, at our June meeting, that the NEC endorses the Peoples Charter. Scottish Regional members could make this suggestion in accordance with the policy of the Scottish Council...