The Diggers return to Wigan on 13 September

Original article is at:- http://unitelive.org/diggers-return/

An opportunity to discover a proud tradition of English radicalism whilst having fun is guaranteed for anyone attending the fourth Wigan Diggers’ Festival on Saturday 13 September. 

The Diggers sprang up around the English Civil War in the seventeenth century. They aimed to use the earth to reclaim the freedom they felt had been partly lost through the Norman Conquest. 

Seizing and owning land ‘in common’ could create a classless society where property and wages are abolished. 

In 1649, small Diggers’ groups defied landlords and the army by settling on common land and growing crops. Supporters travelled nationally attempting to rally supporters. 

The movement was ultimately defeated when violent opposition from landowners saw Diggers beaten, their houses burnt down and legal restraints applied to their occupation. 

The main Diggers propagandist was Gerrard Winstanley, born in Wigan in 1609 and who died on 10 September 1676. 

In 1621 Wiganers dug up common land in a successful access struggle and it is believed that this subsequently inspired Winstanley when he moved to London in 1630. 

Despite being one of the great English radicals, Winstanley was largely unrecognised in his hometown for many years. 

Inspired by hearing Billy Bragg sing The World Turned Upside Down, Stephen Hall, Leigh UNITE branch member, persuaded other local trade union activists to organise an initial Diggers’ Festival in 2011. Its success has been built on in each subsequent year. 

Six local UNITE branches as well as the North West region of the union are backing the 2014 festival. This will take place in the Wigan town centre Wiend area, where there are advanced plans to rename the garden area in Winstanley’s honour.  

On 13 September, actor John Graham-Davies will again perform as Winstanley whilst TV documentary filmmaker David Malone will talk on how the Diggers leader influenced the radical thinkers of the French and American Revolutions. 

There will be a puppet story show on the Diggers - described by Tony Benn as “the first true Socialists” – and an all day children’s arts and craft area. 

In addition there will be 40 plus food, book and other stalls along with the popular ‘Occu-pie Wigan’ beer tent. 

“We are very keen for as many people as possible to come along and join in the fun whilst commemorating a courageous man who influenced the later development of the labour movement in this country,” said Stephen Hall. 

 www.wigandiggersfestival.org 

https://www.facebook.com/events/550650368389097/

All events are free and take place between 11.00am and 9.30pm in the Wiend area of Wigan Town Centre. 

The Diggers Festival Committee has awarded actress Maxine Peake this year’s ‘Gerard Winstanley Spade Award.’ She is the second winner with the first one presented to Tony Benn last year. “It is in recognition of never having lost touch with her working class roots, speaking out against the government’s austerity measures and supporting progressive causes such as the Peterloo Massacre Commemoration and the Working Class Movement Library in Salford,” said Stephen Hall.  

Power in the union and a picket line!

Optare workers in Unite were on strike in May and when a Unite member 

from Tyneside Safety Glass turned up to make a delivery he wasn't crossing any

picket line! A few weeks later workers at Tyneside Safety Glass were

themselves on strike and succeeded in winning a wage increase in excess of the rate of inflation. 

At Optare, strikers won concessions from management before returning to work. 

All photographs copyright Mark Harvey 

RESOLUTE IN PATIENT SAFETY FIGHT

RESOLUTE IN PATIENT SAFETY FIGHT

Intimidation will not stop ambulance members’ resolve 

Photograph is copyright Mark Harvey

Taken from http://unitelive.org/resolute-patient-safety-fight/ 

Eighteen months since first taking strike action and UNITE members at Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) are refusing to be intimidated by their management in a battle over patient safety, union de-recognition and pay and conditions. 

YAS are making £46 million cuts over five years. Facing £300 a month pay cuts, trained support technicians who work with paramedics are being replaced with emergency care assistants (ECA) with just six weeks training. With patient care seriously compromised, Unite members took strike action in April 2013. 

Management reacted by re-employing previously fired employees, permitting the use of private ambulances with less qualified staff and de-recognising Unite despite the union putting forward a well researched alternative financial plan. 

 As predicted, working conditions and patient safety, which go hand-in-hand, have deteriorated since last year. Paramedics and technicians are regularly working in excess of 13-hour shifts without even having time for a meal break. 

“We are all exhausted. Last month I missed 20 meal breaks. Frequently I finish work an hour later than scheduled. Working with unqualified staff makes your job more difficult as you are not only working with the patient but their relatives in some very stressful situations,” explained paramedic Debbie Wilkinson, Unite YAS branch secretary.

No-one is blaming the ECA’s for the current situation and technician Les Muir, Unite rep at Willerby ambulance depot, is concerned that “Eighteen year olds with no life experience are facing some horrendous situations that may later come back to haunt them. 

“The fact they are being employed on emergencies - increasingly on their own without a lead technician - is scary.” 

With management having refused to engage in positive talks, YAS Unite members have continued their battle to maintain a top quality service by taking regular days of action over the last eighteen months. 

The latest was two six-hour walkouts on 29 August and 2 September. Prior to the action staff were told they would be banned from overtime shifts if they participated and also have double-time payments withheld from work already completed.

“They are trying to intimidate people,” said clinical supervisor Martin Dobson, the Unite rep at the Wakefield ambulance depot.

“And if they keep their promise it will make it doubly difficult for the trust to meet the eight minute response time for the most serious, life threatening calls especially as much of the service now depends on overtime work.” 

More than 30 per cent of seriously ill and injured people are currently failing to obtain 999 help within eight minutes across Yorkshire. 

Despite the threats, a large majority of YAS Unite members were on strike on September 2, joining the battle to preserve an essential service. At Menston, Bradford, just one out of the twelve ambulance staff in Unite stayed at work.

“You have to stand up for what you know is right,” said Debbie Wilkinson. “Management should admit their proposed redesign of the ambulance service has failed and come back round the table and negotiate properly.”

April 2013 was the first time UNITE members at YAS took strike action - photograph copyright Mark Harvey 

Giroscope spins on

From the Big Issue in the North magazine, please buy a copy when you see a seller 

Former prisoners who are rebuilding their lives by working at a Hull housing project are restoring rundown properties for those in housing need.

Now a charity, Giroscope began as a worker’s co-operative in 1985 with one of its founders, Martin Newman, still in charge. The ethos of buying up dilapidated properties, renovating them and renting them out remains the same.

There are nine paid members of staff and two apprentices working alongside volunteers, who get on the job training. Their efforts in improving Hull’s housing have recently been recognised with a Queen’s Voluntary Service Award.

Many volunteers are former prisoners. Nick Brackstone, aged 29, served six years before being released in 2013. He had previously worked as a labourer but found paid employment difficult to obtain. Keen to stay out of trouble, earlier this year he took up his probation officer’s proposal and volunteered to work three days a week at Giroscope.

“I needed to stop sitting at home, demonstrate my timekeeping is good and also learn things like painting, taking down walls and plasterboarding that will help me find paid work,” he said. “I am aiming to apply for my Construction Skills Certificate Scheme card to prove I have the training and qualifications required to carry out a certain job.”

After initially volunteering, former long-term prisoner Les Stratford has found paid work
with Giroscope as a site support worker. His recovery from drug and alcohol abuse means he can empathise with many of Giroscope’s volunteers. As a refrigeration and air conditioning engineer with plumbing qualifications he is able to pass on essential building skills.

“I am thankful of being given an opportunity to rebuild my life by working with and helping former prisoners like myself rebuild rundown properties that are rented out to those in need,” he said.

“I am now revisiting prison to speak to inmates and pass on the message that you can move on and have a good life when you are released.”

Giroscope has 80 properties on its books. It borrows money against its existing housing stock to buy new properties.

Giroscope rents are similar to those charged by the local authority. The organisation is keen to ensure no tenant has to supplement their rent from benefits.

Some have held tenancies for 20 years. On only one occasion has someone been compulsorily evicted.

Giroscope architect Caroline Gore-Booth said; “We have young families in properties, a couple from a hostel has just moved into one, migrant workers and volunteers. The main reason people apply is because their landlord refuses to undertake repairs.”

A tour of Giroscope homes in a city that has more 6,000 empty properties was enlivened by Newman’s enthusiasm. “Organisations that begin with a small group of radical people usually fall out or become part of a larger housing organisation,” he said. “Not so Giroscope.

“We are much more professional. We don’t call ourselves anarchists or organise demonstrations but I think we still have the same attitude of mutual support.”

Nick Branstone and Les Stratford 

Care workers keep up strike to overturn 35pc cut in wages

From Big Issue in the North magazine, please buy a copy when you see a seller. 

Fifty experienced care workers in Doncaster who look after people with learning disabilities have so far taken 48 days strike action this year. Last year, the former NHS workers were transferred from the public to the private sector when Care UK won the £6.7 million three- year contract from Doncaster Council to run community care services for their clients in the South Yorkshire town.

Since the 1990s public authorities have consistently transferred their care services for people in their own homes to the private sector and today just 11 per cent remains public. Care UK, which nationally employs 20,000 workers, earns 88 per cent of its annual £650 million income from public funds.

The newly appointed private sector firm sought to make £1.5 million savings from around 200 workers by proposing wage cuts of 35 per cent for its staff and paying 100 new workers
a lower rate of £7 an hour immediately. Many of those on strike have built up professional qualifications for looking after people with learning disabilities but not so the newcomers.

Faced with such massive cuts in their £21,000 a year average income the workers pushed their union, Unison, to ballot them for industrial action after they refused to sign new contracts offering them worse terms and conditions. The result among the 93 staff balloted was overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action starting in March.

In early August the remaining strikers, the numbers of which have dropped as some people have found alternative employment and others have returned to work, took a further 14 days action.

The strike has been maintained by significant donations, mainly from fellow trade unionists, totalling over £100,000. As a result strikers get roughly the equivalent of what the new staff get paid daily.

Strikers have been active in publicising their case and picketing outside the Doncaster offices of Care UK has taken place each strike day.

‘Privatisation of NHS’

Senior support worker Roger Hutt has been in his current job for 34 years and it is the first time he has been on strike.

He said: “What has been done to us is privatisation of the NHS and everyone suffers as a result. I have put my professional career into helping people with learning disabilities and we have improved their lives.

“The work is mentally and physically demanding and you should be properly rewarded as a result. We understand that if the contract had been kept within the NHS there may have been some reductions but nothing like as great as those proposed.”

Angela Shay exceeds Hutt’s service by two years. Soon to retire she was devastated at taking strike action but said: “We have no alternative as the people I work with are like an extended family and they require dedicated staff to work and support them. I am not attacking the new workers but it is just a job for them – the low wages and the lack of training will ensure that is the case.”

Angela Shay and Kevin Horne 

Thirty years ago, Kevin Horne was on strike for a year as part of the miners’ strike. He was arrested at Orgreave in 1984 and later had the charges against him dropped. When he was made redundant from the pit he started working in his current post 19 years ago.

He said: “I am proud of being part of a group of workers who have made it possible for people with learning disabilities to live in the community. I have worked with the same group of boys as they have grown up and they have become part of my extended family.”

Care in the Community was a controversial policy started under the Thatcher government in 1983 that led to disabled people being treated and cared for in their own homes rather than in an institution. In the past people with learning disabilities could expect to live much of their lives in an asylum. Some strikers fear there may be a return to the past as it may be cheaper to keep people locked up.

Solidarity

The Care UK strikers face a difficult struggle. Their local MP, Ed Miliband, Labour leader, has never been on the picket line or spoken alongside them. Unison has no plans to extend the strike as attempting to bring out other workers in solidarity would come up against the anti- trade union laws.

Care UK says any pay increases are unaffordable and insists it has protected the pension rights of workers transferring from the NHS. It also says it has protected jobs at a time when funding from the council for the service has been cut.

Cash settlement

Elsewhere in the north, workers at Optare, the Leeds-based coach and bus manufacturer, went on strike in June after being told the company intended shutting its Sherburn site for two weeks during the height of the summer season when family holidays cost almost double. Members of Unite, the biggest union in Britain, won a compromise deal of a one-week shutdown this year, a cash settlement and an extra half-day holiday.

Photograph courtesy of Mark Harvey of ID8 photography

In Gateshead on the massive Team Valley Industrial Estate, over 100 Unite members at Tyneside Safety Glass were on strike for three weeks in June and July before their employer offered an inflation-beating pay rise, dropped plans to increase the working week and reinstated a sacked worker.

Unite is hoping that the success will encourage non-unionists to consider becoming trade union members. Trade union membership levels in England fell by 595,000 between 1995 and 2013, although across the north density levels remain relatively high in some regions, with South Yorkshire, Merseyside and the North East all above 35 per cent amongst those who are employed.

Pay cut

The issue of pay has also motivated hundreds of thousands of trade unionists to take strike action this year. On 10 July teachers, civil servants, firefighters and council workers walked out for the day following disputes over pay, pensions and service cuts. Firefighters have since taken industrial action over pensions.

Striking public sector workers - copyright Mark Harvey 

A further strike by public sector workers has been called for 14 October. Those taking action claim they have suffered a 20 per cent real-terms pay cut since 2010. With below inflation pay rises of just 1 per cent being offered by their employers this year they hope to persuade the government to increase their wages. There is no indication this is going to happen.

By October, Care UK strikers will have again taken strike action after they unanimously voted to take a further three weeks away from work. Horne will not be participating.

“It is only because I am retiring as I could never, ever cross a picket line – a principle once universal among working people but which is less so today,” he said. “Strikes are a last resort but I do not regret taking part in either the miners’ or the Care UK strike.”

MARK METCALF

International Brigade Memorial Sculpture – Jubilee Gardens, London

For much, much more on labour movement statues and plaques go to rebel road at UNITE education. 

The International Brigade memorial was unveiled by Michael Foot on 5 October 1985, one day after the 49^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street in east London in which Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts, assisted by the Metropolitan Police, were prevented from marching by anti-fascist groups. It was to prove a mortal blow for fascism in Britain. However in Spain a much greater battle had started on 17 July 1936 when General Franco’s nationalists took up arms against the democratically elected Spanish Republic. Franco could count on the military support of fascist Germany and Italy. Anti-fascists internationally recognised that this was a struggle with massive international implications and many – estimated at over 30,000 - were prepared to volunteer and fight on the republican side. Many were killed in an ultima

tely unsuccessful fight that in its aftermath paved the way for the Second World War and saw Franco rule Spain until his death in 1975. 

The memorial sculpture by Ian Walters is in bronze. 

The inscription on the front reads: INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE. In honour of over 2,100 men and women volunteers who left these shores to fight side by side with the Spanish people in their heroic struggle against fascism, 1936-1939.” 

The inscription on the reverse side of the plinth reads: “This memorial, unveiled by Michael Foot, 5^th October 1985, was made possible by the support of many democratic organizations, individuals and the Greater London Council.” 

The inscription on the left side is taken from Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ and reads: ‘Yet Freedom! Yet thy banner, torn, but flying.

Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.”

The inscription on the right side reads: “They went because their open eyes could see no other way.” It is from the poem Volunteer by C. Day Lewis in 1938. 

For more details see:- 

www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM9FDE_International_Brigade_Memorial_Sculpture_Jubilee_Gardens_London_UK

Many thanks to Jim Thatcher, UNITE member and blacklisted construction worker, for sending in his photograph of the sculpture. 

A time for youth at Durham Miners' Gala

A time for youth

Mark Metcalf attended the recent Durham Miners’ Gala and has some ideas that he hopes will help it survive many more years

Taken from Coldtype magazine.

http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.14/pdfs/0914.ColdType.Sept2014.pdf

It was great to see an article about the Durham Miners’ Gala in the last issue of ColdType.

Despite the growing numbers for whom this annual event cannot be missed, it constantly fails to attract the attention of the mainstream media and the BBC and, as a result, is little known about overseas. It would be brilliant if more overseas visitors, especially trade union delegations, attended.

In recent years the gala has expanded with a whole series of events that start in the days leading up to the Saturday march and rally.

This year, UNITE the union commissioned the Red Ladder Theatre Company to present a musical play about the 1984/85 miners’ strike. “We’re Not Going Back” – was well received when it made its debut in the main council chamber of the truly magnificent Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) headquarters at Redhills, where the DMA and UNITE last year established a welfare and employment rights advice support centre, which has also been the base for significant campaigning initiatives against government welfare cuts.

The number of new miners’ lodge and community banners that are made across County Durham communities throughout the year also demonstrates that the meeting itself is not just one day in the calendar.

For someone like myself who first attended the Big Meeting in the 1960s and has returned on close to forty occasions it is truly uplifting that, despite having no working miners for over two decades, the gala not only exists but also is getting bigger. There are moments when taking in the whole scene throughout Durham City and on the Racecourse by the River Wear almost brings me to tears so deep are the emotions and the connections with my forefathers and their wives, not forgetting my mates who worked down the pits and all those who fought so heroically in 1972, 1974 and 1984 to defend their terms and conditions, and ultimately, the communities I was brought up in.

It is not only the fact that there are no working miners that makes the continued existence of the gala something of a miracle. Despite being left without any memberIship contributions, the gala organisers, the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) has continued to represent at industrial tribunals those former miners made unwell by harsh working conditions.

But with the DMA having lost a lengthy, highly expensive court case in defence of former miners suffering from osteoarthritis on grounds that the three-year time limit for claims had been exceeded, the bill of £2.2 million naturally placed doubts about the future of the gala, which costs in excess of £60,000 a year. Friends of the Durham

Miners’ Gala was launched last year and asks people to make a minimum donation of £2 a month or £24 a year. Over a thousand people, including myself and some friends I have persuaded, have so far signed up. Meantime, major unions – UNITE particularly – have contributed generously to the costs. All this demonstrates that there is a determination to ensure the future of this important trade union and labour movement event.

Photograph courtesy of Mark Harvey of ID8 photography. 

Changes needed

However, I feel there are a number of things that need changing and adopting that would make the gala even more important. The first is its appearance and by which I mean at times it no longer appears to be a miners’ gala. This is because most of the miners’ lodge banners and their accompanying banners are first on the cobbled Durham City streets and they go through in a block. 

Then the various individual trade union blocks from such as UNISON, NUT, PCS and the RMT go through separately. I feel it would be much better if these blocks were broken down with the miners’ lodge banners intertwined with those of other trade unions. By doing this then anyone turning up would never be able to lose sight of the fact that first and foremost this event is historically connected with the miners’ of Durham and Northumberland, something that must never be allowed to be forgotten.

That said there is a clear need for another just as important message to come though on the day and that must be JOIN A TRADE UNION AND GET ORGANISED.

In particular, there are tens of thousands of young people of working age who attend the gala. Speaking to some of them quickly illustrates they know virtually nothing about trade unions. In my day you left school, started work and joined the union but that is not so today although the North East of England remains an area where over 35% of those in work are in a union, a figure significantly above the UK average. “It is something my dad was in.” “There isn’t one where I work.” “No one has mentioned joining to me.” “I’d get sacked if I joined one.” All these and more were said to me when I spoke to some youngsters at this year’s gala.

With trade union density among young workers aged between 16 and 24 down at 8 per cent then it is clear that much work needs to be done, especially when it is known that they are working in workplaces and sectors where there is no union to join. Whilst there are often many references from the speaker’s platform as to how terrible things are for young people there is little attempt to engage with those that are there. Certainly the range of speakers themselves is often much, much older and none is a young trade union member who may have unionised and organised a particular workplace at some time in the recent past.

Learning from success

There is nothing so inspiring as learning from success. Just days before this year’s gala, the workers at Tyneside Safety Glass in nearby Gateshead had largely won their pay strike and it would have been great to let the crowd know of this important success achieved after three weeks on strike.

Where were the big banners with the slogans JOIN A UNION. Where were the leaflets – again with examples of success and accompanied by information about what a union is and how to join - and where was the drive to speak to young people on the day and encourage them to sign up?

I have already mentioned the need to try to engage with the young people by having a speaker more closely related to their age group. But, in addition, do we really need 4-5 people to more or less say the same thing and represent the same Labour Party constituency. The Labour movement has lost two of its best speakers in Bob Crow and Tony Benn and aside from UNITE’s Len Mc- Cluskey and Mark Serwotka from the PCS, I am not convinced that the current trade union leaders command much of a presence, they certainly didn’t this year as what they had to say was not especially riveting.

There is within the brochure for the gala, and occasionally from the platform, references to new movements and campaigns including UK Uncut and the People’s Assembly. Only weeks after the gala, a march was started from Jarrow to London to put pressure on the government to change the disastrous course it has plotted to privatise the National Health Service. This movement was kick-started by local Darlington mums and I wouldn’t have minded hearing from them. Interestingly, the largest cheer this year came when the Communications Workers Union speaker Jane Lofts said: “Workers should unite with every refugee and asylum speaker.”

A good friend is someone who is unafraid to offer constructive criticism. I am a good friend of the Durham Miners’ Gala and while I certainly hope to see the gala running for many years to come I think it needs some changes. I am sure other people just as passionate as me feel the same. 

Dedicated to Joseph Charlton, aged 42, and Robert Noble, aged 45, relatives of mine who perished at the Easington Colliery disaster in 1951.