Special award for safety campaigner

http://unitelive.org/we-will-remember-them/

We will remember them

Campaigner Hilda Palmer wins award for safety work 

Mark Metcalf, Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 

A Unite member who won an International Women’s Day award from Manchester City Council for campaigning for safer workplaces wants her fellow union members to participate in today’s International Workers Memorial (WMD) Day nationwide events (April 28).

Hilda Palmer is the co-ordinator for the independent Greater Manchester Hazards Centre that provides advice on health, safety, welfare and hazards at work.

Hilda is also acting chair of the National Hazards Campaign. This is a UK wide network established in 1988 and which brings together Hazards Centres, trade unions, health and safety groups and specific campaigns that include Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK).

This was started in 2006 by families left angry and frustrated at knowing their relatives had been unlawfully killed at work with their killers mostly escaping significant punishment. Hilda is the FACK facilitator and works tirelessly to support families who have lost loved ones.

Around 1,400 people are annually killed in work-related incidents and up to 50,000 die as a result of a work-related illness. The Health and Safety Executive says that 70 per cent of these deaths are due to management failure.

Inspections cut

Yet proactive inspections are being cut and even banned by the coalition government in most workplaces. Meanwhile, the blacklisting of building worker trade unionists who have raised health and safety concerns has been allowed to flourish with the coalition refusing to order a public inquiry.

FACK wants ‘urgent government action to halt the complacency about deaths at work and decent laws which will bring dangerously negligent bosses to justice.’ It wants safety reps given more rights. Organisation members participate in nationwide WMD events on 28 April that were first organised by the Hazards Campaign in 1992.

It was Hilda’s work with FACK and WMD that led to her winning the special IWD recognition award named in memory of Margaret Ashton from Manchester City Council. This was presented at a packed awards ceremony at Manchester Town Hall.

Ashton, a suffragette, was in 1908 the first elected woman to sit on the council and helped found the local Women’s Trade Union council to set up a babies hospital. She later fell from favour by opposing Britain’s participation in the First World War. Hilda has followed in Ashton’s footsteps by opposing Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war.

“I was naturally delighted to find myself presented with the award as clearly Margaret Ashton is someone to admire,” she said.

“I accepted it not for myself but for all the greats in the Hazards movement, the FACK founders and the families of relatives killed in entirely preventable incidents at work. I especially dedicate the award to Joanne Hill, mother of Cameron Minshull, and her family.” Cameron was a 16-year old apprentice when he was killed at work in January 2013.

“We will remember all those killed at work on WMD on 28 April. There are events right across the country. I’d urge Unite members to go to one of them. We will remember the dead whilst fighting for the living,” said Hilda.

Mick Whitley, the Unite NW regional secretary, was “delighted to see that Hilda’s hard work with FACK, Hazards and on WMD has been recognised. Rightly so as she has done some remarkable work.”

Fighting to keep NHS in public hands

Go to:-

http://unitelive.org/fighting-to-keep-nhs-in-public-hands/

Police watchdog accused of gagging order

From Big Issue in the North magazine. Please buy a copy if you see a seller.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission should publish its completed report into the policing of events at Orgreave during the Miners’ Strike in 1984, says South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner. 

Alan Billings’ call for publication comes after the IPCC offered interested parties the chance to examine the report but only if they were bound by strict terms of confidentiality. 

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) are campaigning for a public inquiry into Orgreave, which occurred in the middle of the year-long national strike by over 100,000 miners. 

Losing control 

Ninety-five miners were charged with riot and assembly when 4,500 police, many in riot gear, clashed with 8,000 striking miners at the Orgreave coking works. All charges
were dropped in 1985 due to the unreliability of police evidence. Compensation was paid to some pickets in out-of- court settlements. But no police officers were disciplined or charged for their actions, which left many miners injured. 

The events of Orgreave came under the spotlight once more after Liverpool football fans established in 2012 that the deaths of 96 supporters at Hillsborough in April 1989 were caused by the police losing control of events. In the aftermath, South Yorkshire Police (SYP) referred itself to the IPCC. 

When the press pointed out the same force had been in charge of operations at Orgreave SYP referred itself once more to the IPCC over events there. The police watchdog’s report contains its decision on whether or not to conduct a full investigation. 

Campaigners expected a decision earlier this year but the IPCC said it was “awaiting the result of our consultation with our Hillsborough investigation team and legal advice from our barrister before we can proceed further”. 

‘Unhappy’ 

Billings, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, said he was concerned about the delay. “The IPCC should publish. The former miners have been waiting too long. South Yorkshire needs closure,” he said. 

Chris Kitchen, NUM general secretary, said: “The IPCC took over two years to investigate and having finally made a decision it can’t say what it is or even when it will publicly announce what it is. That’s wrong.” 

The IPCC has offered to allow the OTJC and NUM to read the decision. The latter has sent
its legal representative to do so but Kitchen, who has not been informed of the decision, is “unhappy that it can’t be shared with all those that are concerned about justice”. 

The OTJC has refused the IPCC’s offer. In a statement it said the conditions are “effectively a gagging order where a small number of our members would obtain information they cannot discuss with other members and more widely with the many other people who support our work”. 

It added: “OTJC strongly condemns this situation and reiterates its demand for a full public inquiry into police actions at Orgreave in June 1984.” 

The story of a Sunderland trialist in the 1920's

This was originally printed some years ago but remains a good story 

Remembering Benny Rothman on Kinder Scout trespass weekend

 Benny Rothman - working class hero.

Trade unionist Benny Rothman, the man who led the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout, Derbyshire, in April 1932, is commemorated with a blue plaque at his former Timperley home, seven miles south of Manchester. 

Born in 1911 it wasn’t until Benny acquired a bike in his teens that he discovered life outside the overcrowded environment of working class Cheetham in north Manchester. He soon became a keen rambler and spent his 16th birthday climbing to the summit of Snowdon.

All photographs copyright Harry Rothman 

At the end of World War 1 in 1918 returning British soldiers had been promised by prime minister Lloyd George a “land fit for heroes.” Landowners, represented in Parliament and the Lords by the Tories, were intent on ensuring that didn’t include the right for those soldiers and others to roam Britain’s mountains and moorlands. 

Since 1884 there had been numerous unsuccessful attempts made for an Access to Mountains Bill to be presented in Parliament and with each passing year the chances of an Act being passed seemed to recede.

In this situation the British Workers’ Sports Federation (BWSF) that started in 1928 as a working-class movement to organise sport for workers decided to trespass on Kinder Scout. It was not a universally popular move amongst ramblers. 

On a sunny Sunday April 24, 1932, Benny, an active BWSF member, found himself thrust forward as the leader of 400 ‘kinder scout mass trespassers’. 

Together in opposition to a line of gamekeepers, the trespassers successfully crossed the Derbyshire Peak District’s ‘forbidden mountain.’ Stung by this deliberate defiance of the law the police arrested six of them.

If the authorities felt this would be the end of the matter they miscalculated by sending Benny Rothman, listed in court as a storekeeper, and four (John Anderson, Julius Clyne, Anthony Gillett and David Nussbaum) others to prison - where Benny used his time productively to learn shorthand - for up to six months. The public outrage that followed helped bring the issue of the countryside to the fore.

More importantly it emboldened many access campaigners who in subsequent negotiations with landowners over obtaining access for walks could point to the trespass when their requests were refused. 

A radical post-war Labour government responded by introducing the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Lewis Silkin, the then Labour minster for town and country planning described it as, “a people’s charter for the open air, for the hikers and ramblers, for everyone who loves to get out into the open air and enjoy the countryside.” 

The Peak District became the first designated national park and today there are fifteen. The passing of the Act also means there are over 50 designated areas of outstanding natural beauty and over 200 natural nature reserves that are there to protect what are seen as the most important areas of wildlife habitat and geological formations and as places of scientific information. 

Th right to roam took much longer to obtain. Again, Benny played an important part. In 1982, with access still restricted on many hills, 2000 ramblers celebrated the 50th anniversary of the mass trespass by following the same path.

According to Terry Howard, Sheffield Ramblers chairman, “Benny Rothman addressed us in the quarry where the original trespass had started. He helped inspire a whole new generation like myself to finish what earlier campaigns had started.” 

In 2000, under another Labour government, the Countryside Rights of Way Act established the right to roam on certain upland and uncultivated areas of England and Wales. Many new paths allowing open access have been created. 

Benny died aged 90 in 2002. According to his son Harry, “he rarely spoke about Kinder Scout as he had far too much going on in his life as he was engaged in things that were immediately important such as trade union and Communist Party work.” His passion for a better world was shared by his wife, Lilian, a mill worker from Rochdale.

In the 1930s Benny played an active role in physically opposing Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and over forty years later he helped to inspire a new generation of anti-fascists by speaking to them about the dangers of the National Front. 

Benny worked as a fitter for most his life. He was regularly elected to represent his fellow members in the Amalgamated Engineering Union. (one of the forerunners to Unite)

At Metro-Vicks in the 1950s his reputation for winning the best piecework rates led to him being sacked and, sadly, his workmates did not support him. He was later victimised by his employers when the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 took place. He nevertheless continued to be an active trade unionist.

“There were always visitors to our home in Timperley such as guys who had been unfairly sacked.

“Dad was a clever bloke and had a good memory. He used his shorthand to keep good notes and so when it came to negotiations with management I understand he would constantly refer back to them when someone might like to say something different.”  Professor Harry Rothman. 

Benny training an apprentice at Kearns 

Lilian and Benny celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in 1987 

Throughout the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Benny was tireless in organising support for strikers. In 1990, Benny Rothman, who was a great friend of Hugh Scanlon, was given the Amalgamated Engineering Union’s highest award, the special award of merit. Six years later he was made honorary life member of the Ramblers Association.

* A booklet on Benny's life is currently being written by myself for the Unite Education department. All being well it will be out in 2016. 

Asbestos: a dangerous legacy for nation’s schools

The lack of a strategy to eradicate asbestos from schools has been criticised by two people with experience of the dangers it poses.   (A Big Issue in the North magazine article. )

A headteacher from York and the widower of a teacher who died from an asbestos- related disease, mesothelioma, were commenting following the publication last month of a government review of schools asbestos policy. 

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) estimates 90 per cent of schools contain asbestos and that at least 253 teachers died between 1980 and 2013 from mesothelioma – a disease with no known cure and which can take between 25 and 50 years to develop. 

Prior to 1985, when it was banned, asbestos was widely used in buildings to insulate pipes and electrical appliances and on floor coverings. Annual deaths from asbestos are expected to peak at over 4,000 in 2020. 

Although the government published its review last month, a more extensive Education Funding Agency survey in 2012-14 of 19,000 schools excluded asbestos. The NUT contends the government is therefore “unaware” of the extent, type and conditions of asbestos in schools and “has made no attempt to remedy the situation”. 

Full survey 

Tony Gavin, head of Laurence Jackson Secondary (LJS) School, Guisborough, near York, said the decision to exclude asbestos from the survey, which will be used to decide funding allocations to schools, was a mistake. 

“Everything in the 1950s was built with asbestos. With death totals still rising a full survey should be prioritised,” he said. 

In 2010 Gavin worked with Redcar and Cleveland Education Authority to implement an asbestos plan for the school and identify areas of concern such as windows that should not be tampered with. “We then tackled two areas where immediate work was required,” he said. “Now that our school is being rebuilt under the Priority School Building Programme, one building had its asbestos removed before demolition in December.” 

Removal 

Gavin said whoever is elected at the general election should adopt an asbestos removal strategy. “I think this would be a very good idea, especially as many school buildings are gradually being replaced or demolished anyway,” he said. 

Michael Lees’ wife Gina died from mesothelioma in 2000. She had enjoyed a 30-year teaching career until being diagnosed just three months before she died. Lees has since formed the campaign group Asbestos in Schools. “I welcome the release of the review of schools asbestos policy as at one point it did look like it was going to be held back until after the election,” said Lees. “And it does acknowledge teachers, support staff and former pupils are dying for asbestos exposure. 

‘Lacks vision’ 

“But it lacks vision and proposed no long term strategy to eventually eradicate asbestos from our schools.” 

A Department for Education spokesperson could not comment in detail because it is a pre-election period but said: “Nothing is more important than the health and safety of children and staff in our schools. 

“Schools have information to ensure those responsible for managing asbestos are equipped to do so effectively.” 

My part in the Bradford fire book by Martin Fletcher