The Biggest and Best: Billy Foulke short film

 The Biggest and Best: Billy Foulke 

View at:- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zei3KpirqW0

It is eight minutes long and is part of a major project in Blackwell Colliery this year. 

MAXINE PEAKE BACKS APPEAL FOR A DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE REMARKABLE BETTY TEBBS

 

MAXINE PEAKE BACKS BOLTON TRADES COUNCIL FUND RAISING APPEAL FOR A DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE REMARKABLE BETTY TEBBS

Following the publication by Unite of a booklet on Betty Tebbs remarkable life, Bolton Trades Council are raising up to £6,000 to make a 30-minute documentary film on BETTY TEBBS – A radical working class hero.

Maxine Peake is backing the appeal – listen to what she has to say at:- https://markwritecouk.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/betty-tebbs-funding-appeal.m4a

“I’d like to appeal to the trade union and labour movement to donate up to £6,000 towards a documentary film about the life of my great friend Betty Tebbs.

Betty was a life-long socialist of 98 years who’s indomitable fighting spirit and trade union organisational abilities helped to win improvements in pay and conditions everywhere – particularly at the East Lancashire Paper Mill – that she worked across the printing and retail sector.

Following the drop of nuclear bombs in Japan in 1945 she dedicated her life to  Peace by campaigning with CND.  She was resolved to improving women’s rights through organisations such as the National Assembly for Women.

In her later years, Betty, whose first husband Ernest, joined the war effort “to fight fascism” and  laid down his life doing so, took up the cause of the Palestinian people.

It was great that four years ago Unite published a biography on Betty compiled by Mark Metcalf who is now combining with film maker Francesca Platt to make a 30-minute documentary film on her life.

Funds are needed - £1500 has already been donated – and can be sent to Bolton and District United Trades Council, Account number 59020222 Sort code 089018

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Production of the film will be undertaken by Francesca Platt, production manager of the Bolton arts project The Videobox at https://www.thevideobox.tv/contact-us/ alongside writer Mark Metcalf.

The pair recently collaborated on a well-received 30-minute documentary film BREAD NOT BAYONETS – Halifax 1842 on the uprising, part of the 1842 General Strike, in the West Yorkshire town in 1842. This can be viewed at: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0UxMadnIEAt

Funds for this work were donated by a number of trade union branches.

The work will consist of additional research, on screen interviews, site visits, sourcing music, photography, editing and production. There will be a number of costs associated with the work.

There will be a public screening of the completed works and it will be available free to labour movement organisations & community groups. The work will go online.

Copies of the Unite publication on Betty Tebbs at:- https://markwritecouk.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/6328-betty-tebbs-web.pdf  Hard copies from Mark Metcalf on 07392 852561 or metcalfmc@outlook.com

Draft resolution This branch agrees to support the appeal by Bolton Trades Council towards the costs of a documentary film on Betty Tebbs. We agree to donate……………..

Donations to:-  Bolton and District United Trades Council, Account no 59020222 Sort code 089018

Hull to become the first UK city to give people the "right to grow" their own food on public land,

 

Charlie Clutterbuck has “warmly welcomed” news that Hull is set to become the first UK city to give people the "right to grow" their own food on public land, and now wants “the idea adopting nationally.”

Labour councillor Gill Kennett acted after a local resident’s vegetable patch, which provided wholesome food for neighbours on public land had to be dug up following a complaint by a newly-arrived householder. Working closely with Hull Food Partnership (HFP), Kennett proposed a motion that won unanimous support at the September full City council meeting backing the right to grow vegetables on land owned by the authority.

“I feel strongly that this ticks so many boxes for Hull. We are a deprived city and having access to good fresh food, enabling people to get together to grow it and encouraging skilled growers to pass on their skills to the less experienced can bring communities together, make places look better, help tackle social isolation and potentially improve the mental health of some people,” said Kennett. “Plus, at a time of a cost-of-living crisis it can help reduce food bills.”

Council officers are now working to bring to life Kennett’s proposal with a report to go before the Communities, Culture and Leisure Scrutiny Committee in January outlining possible locations, providing access to water at them and examining the finance required to relieve pressure on insurance costs. “It might take a few months to get officially started, but I am excited at what we are trying to achieve,” said Kennett, who for many years worked in children’s services and on retirement became a councillor in 2012.

“It is great to see what they are planning in Hull,” said Clutterbuck who has mapped many parts of the NW to show food can be extensively grown on wasteland and who was central to the establishment of the Incredible Edible Project, Todmorden, formed in 2008 by Pam Warhurst who has been passing on her experiences to HFP.

“Rubbish land in a valley in the middle of the Pennines, producing salad crops nearly all year round, several thousand pounds worth of fruit-tree cuttings, and supporting bees, ducks and cows shows we could stop transporting food half way around the world by better using our public realm and reconnecting people to growing food, which includes vegetables and fruits, often not stocked by supermarkets, for diverse communities,” says Charlie.

HFP development officer Anna Route is keen for communities to get the official go-ahead to grow food on disused public land. “There are people want to do so now. It will take time to attract others but the more sites there are across the city will mean they’ll get noticed and attract new people. It needs to be viewed as a long-term thing as that is how growing works. It takes determination and effort, trial and error and to keep trying. But the rewards are worth it.”

 

 

 

 

 

End fox hunting on our national parks.

 Unpublished article for uniteLANDWORKER Winter 2023/24 

A coalition of charities led by the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) are campaigning to push National Park Authorities (NPA) in England and Wales to do all in their power to end fox hunting on our national parks.

When Labour did finally sweep away hunting with dogs in 2005 it needed the Commons Speaker Michael Martin to invoke the Parliament Act for only the fourth time since 1949, after Conservative peers in the Lords constantly refused to pass the legislation despite MPs support for it on a free vote. 

As the trade union for rural workers, the TGWU (now Unite) welcomed the legislation viewing fox hunting as unnecessary and cruel with foxes dying terrible deaths after being pursued over lengthy distances before being caught and ripped to death by the chasing pack. 

The Countryside Alliance (CA) was predictably hostile, predicted that the legislation would be unenforceable and threatened defiance. 

In the first two years there were just eight successful prosecutions under the Act but, thankfully, the numbers have risen consistently ever since. However, there is an overwhelming body of evidence – LACS recorded nearly 1,000 incidents in the last hunting season - showing fox hunting with dogs is still being pursued under the smokescreen of ‘trail hunting’, which involves a pack of hounds following an artificially laid scent.

LACS is calling on NPA to follow in the footsteps of the National Trust and Natural Resource Wales in banning trail hunting on their land. A petition to this effect is being handed into the NPA soon and other activities will follow.

Karen (*), (not her real name) a farmer with her husband in North Yorkshire who lives close to the North Yorkshire Moors and Yorkshire Dales National Parks. (NPs) supports LACS campaign.

“Fox hunting takes place regularly locally and this disturbs lots of wildlife. There have been prosecutions but anyone speaking up takes a serious risk of being harassed.

“Older farmers hunt because they see it as a tradition and a social event. But others are quite vile and enjoy witnessing a fox or a minx, as they also hunt those defenceless animals, being ripped apart.

“I am pleased LACS and other bodies have a campaign to get NPs to do everything in their power to end fox hunting across their regions. This won’t be easy as they don’t own the land and there are some big, powerful landowners within these areas.”

Only 4% of land in the Lake District (LD) Park is owned by the LD National Park Authority.

The Duchy of Cornwall – now Prince William - is one of the largest private landowners in England with an estate of 135,000 acres of which 13% is in Cornwall and half of which is on Exmoor National Park in Devon and where animal rights campaigners are seeking to have the law vigorously upheld.

The future King and his wife are keen hunters and William has spoken out in support of trophy hunting in Africa.

It is apparent therefore that it is not going to be an easy task to push the NP Authorities, which are legal bodies charged with maintaining a National Park, to act to help finally end fox hunting.

To take action go to: -  https://takeaction.league.org.uk/page/131959/petition/1?locale=en-GB

MORE RURAL SOCIAL HOMES CALL

 

MORE RURAL SOCIAL HOMES CALL

Wait list length is just plain wrong says Defend Council Housing

UniteLANDWORKER Winter 2023/24

Housing campaigners Defend Council Housing (DCH) wishes to speak to rural households stuck on the ever-growing rural social housing waiting lists that has now reached 197,894/ The testimonies gathered would be fed into an All-Party Parliamentary Group enquiry into the need for council housing.

Lord Best, who led the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for many years, has written extensively and chaired many commissions on housing. “As the National Housing Federation (NHF) has revealed the national position for rural housing has worsened quite dramatically in recent years………….trends (include) pricing out locals… (and) a fall in availability of private rented accommodation. In Devon the County notes a 50% decline and in North Devon alone a 67% fall in just 2-3 years.”

The NHF figures show that 46,318 additional households were added to the national social housing waiting list in rural areas between 2019-2022. And with just 5,953 new social rent houses constructed rurally over the same period then the crisis is growing at a rate 10 times that of towns and cities.

Best sees the answers lying in national and local government action. “We need to enable councils to stop the loss of longer-term lettings to Airbnb-style lets through a planning consent requirement and we need to embark on a major programme of social housing, not least for rural communities where so much council housing has been sold under Right to Buy.”

Best chairs the Devon Housing Commission that has already had 170 submissions, mainly from rural and coastal communities, from those facing severe housing difficulties.

A similar national enquiry is now being organised by Best’s parliamentary colleagues that comprise the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Housing and Social Mobility whose purpose is ‘to champion social housing providers that support communities to secure sustainable livelihoods’ by ‘examining evidence led insights.’

DCH is providing secretariat (administrative) support to the APPG that is co-chaired by MPs Peter Aldous (Tory) and Liz Twist. (Labour)

DCH is keen to collate the experiences of rural households stuck on long waiting lists for social housing and would welcome the assistance of Unite members in rural communities to make this possible. The group has already set up meetings in urban areas including Rochdale but wants to reach out into countryside communities.

According to Eileen Short, “we are seeing the return to the slum, overcrowded, insecure living conditions of the 19th century that drove the mass council housing movement in the first place.

“Whether you are in housing need yourself or deeply concerned for future generations, help build a movement to address the housing crisis.

“This initiative could help reveal the facts about the present state of housing and detail how to mend the housing crisis. Please make contact if you can assist,” she added.

 

In conjunction with Homes for All, DCH has put forward a 5 Point Plan which aims to provide concrete proposals to help solve the housing crisis.

1. Government investment in a mass council housing building programme, including requisitioning of empty homes and abolition of ‘right to buy’
2. Rent controls and secure tenancies in the private rental sector. Robust regulation of housing associations
3. New funding to repair and refurbish existing council housing – do not demolish
4. Adequate funding for fire safety, and for retrofitting and thermal insulation
5. Planning for the people and the planet, and not for developers’ profits

To contact Defend Council Housing ring 07342 098440 and at info@defendcouncilhousing.org

See also Homes for All website at www.axethehousingact.org.uk

 

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - modern slavery

 

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

The truth about modern slavery, by Emily Kenway, published by Pluto Press (£14.99)

Unite Landworker magazine Winter 2023/24 

Slavery is a term associated with shackles, boats and cruelty. All right-thinking people are against it and so consequently when they hear the name of William Wilberforce and the term modern-slavery, which includes forced labour, human trafficking and slavery they will sit up, pay attention and help to eradicate it?

The problem is that the modern day slavery framework has been constructed by some of the very reactionary people, companies, media outlets and governments who have attacked the very forces – the trade unions – who can do the most to end today’s slavery.

In 2016 Prime Minster Theresa May, who a year earlier introduced the Modern Slavery Act (MSA), was lauded by the media for launching her ‘anti-slavery crusade’ when she said, “this government is determined to build a Great Britain that works for everyone and will not tolerate modern slavery, an evil trade that shatters victims’ lives and traps them in a cycle of abuse.”

Warm words, that Kenway notes in the real world translated into only 12 percent of those officially recognised as modern slavery victims being given a right to remain in the UK in 2016. May, of course, did not use the MSA to legally require companies to perform extensive investigations into their supply chains and to subsequently address any human rights impacts they identified.

Meanwhile, Labour inspectorates such as the Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate, HSE, HMRC’ wage unit and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority are all woefully underfunded and understaffed. In 2021, the anti-slavery charity Hope of Justice revealed that a year after the news first broke, workers in some Leicester textile factories were still being paid as little as £3.50 an hour.

And as Landworker highlighted last summer it also took the Tories over three years to report into the initial Seasonal Workers Scheme. (SWS) This is designed to make up for the shortage following Brexit of agricultural labour. Unsurprisingly, the report revealed gross exploitation of migrant workers, particularly those from Ukraine, who in the meantime were clearly still being terribly exploited as highlighted in an article on 19 April 2022 by The Guardian titled: ‘Ukrainian workers workers flee ‘modern slavery’ conditions on UK farms.’

The SWS, which has been massively expanded to allow up to 40,000 workers, including poultry workers and haulage drivers, to work in the UK for up to six months is, as highlighted by the Focus of Labour Exploitation (FLEX) and Fife Migrants Forum (FMF), a bonded labour scheme – forcing workers to remain with one employer – the likes of which was employed in Britain’s plantation colonies after the abolition of slavery.

Kenway contends that tougher immigration controls, embodied in Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’, prevent migrant workers from seeking help when they experience exploitation, the result of which is a lowering of wages and conditions for all workers.

FLEX/FMF proposals to tackle these problems, including financial support to migrant community organisations and trade unions, who can then offer tailored support, have largely been ignored by the Scottish and UK Governments.

Kenway, does not, of course, condemn the many honest people seeking to end modern slavery. Her readers are asked to imagine doing things differently with each chapter providing possible alternatives to conventional thought on how to tackle modern slavery, which is a product and not some sort of extreme aberration of the political economy we live under in which so few people own so much wealth. Ultimately, modern slavery will exist and even grow until we find a way to organise workers everywhere to get what we rightly deserve.

Colombia: 'COMMITTED TO DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN'

 Unite observer pleased at Colombian result for trade 

Unite Landworker Winter 2023/4 

When Michelle Smith from the UNITE executive committee visited Colombia last year as part of a Justice for Colombia (J4C) delegation to observe the presidential election and monitor the state of trade union and human rights she witnessed “great enthusiasm… amongst voters… especially young people, women, ethnic minorities, the peace movement and trade unions.”

Michelle was delighted that Gustavo Petro was elected with his vice-president Francia Marquez -a long standing peace and environmental activist - becoming the first African-Colombian woman to hold the post in the new coalition government, the Historic Pact. “Social investment was promised with pledges to make decent education and healthcare more accessible to lower-income Colombians. By developing basic services, including improving sanitary conditions and bringing clean water to underdeveloped regions, poverty can be tackled”

Michelle met victims of state violence which includes thousands of trade unionists over the last half century with Colombia even today the deadliest country for organised labour.

Petro came to power promising to honour the 2016 Peace Agreement in which paramilitary and guerilla groups – of which FARC was the largest – laid down their weapons after a decades long war that left 450,000 civilians dead.

J4C, which was established to promote solidarity with Colombian civil society by the trade union movement here in 2002, played a vital role in facilitating the talks between the Colombian government and guerillas, of which Petro was one in his early adult years, that led to peace.

However, when Ivan Duque became President in 2018, he allowed inequality to rise and abandoned the peace pathway leading to over 1,300 social leaders and peace accord signatories being assassinated. 40 Fensuagro agricultural workers’ union members were murdered.

Petro’s government has promised Total Peace as a means of markedly distinguishing itself from previous fragmented and piecemeal negotiations with individual armed groups. It intends implementing peace accords as well as pursuing national unity by reducing inequality levels.

In March 2023 the government made history by recognising the trade union movement as a collective victim of the lengthy conflict. On 13 September a commemoration event that included Labour Minister Glorio Ramirez, a former trade unionist who visited Britain and Ireland with JFC in 2006, acknowledged the violence enacted against organised labour. Also present were relatives of murdered trade unionists as well as representatives of Colombia’s three trade union centres – CUT, CGT and CTC.

Petro told the crowd “With the strength of the people, I can say that the trade union movement was a victim of violence in thousands of murders due to greed and barbarism.”

Unsurprisingly, Michelle is heartened by developments.

“Trade unions in Britain and Ireland have long campaigned for an end to violence against Colombian trade unionists. We are very pleased that the current Colombia President recognises this historic injustice and is not only working alongside unions to develop government policy but has appointed former trade union leaders into key governmental positions.

“The challenge for Petro and the Colombian trade union movement will be seeing the ambitious social reforms and peace policy implemented inside the four-year term.

“Ongoing international support will be essential in maximising the possibility of making this a reality and Unite and other British and Irish unions Ireland are committed to doing everything we can.”