National Delegate Conference 21-24 June 2011

Tuesday briefing: Nothing about us, without us, is for us

The first motion of Conference borrows a slogan first used in Hungary and Poland about foreign relations but more recently by the displaced people of New Orleans after the hurricane.

Applied to Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ con, it exposes the top down cynical programme to remove democratic control of services, sell-off those services and marginalise ‘whole sections of society’.

Unfortunately, all too many were seduced by the Big Society myth. Charities and other community organisations fell into the trap but are now wakening up to the fact that this not about enabling, it is about destroying services.

Back in March 2010, Scotland’s John Stevenson appeared on the BBC’s ‘The Big Questions’ slamming the Big Society ‘smokescreen’ in the face of opposition from a range of community and religious groups.

However, when he warned that all those groups could only function if there were ‘healthy and well-resourced public services’, the same people applauded loudly.

The message back then - as it is now - is that we need to expose the con and build alliances across all the services we represent.

Crucially we need to extend that to working together with the communities that rely on the services we provide to combat the co-ordinated political and media attacks on the whole welfare state.

Northern Ireland’s Motion 33 calls on us to challenge the ‘Big Society’ myth - convincing our own members, their families and communities that there is an alternative.

Cuts are not the cure

Composite E is the keynote motion on the economy from the NEC with Scottish input from Aberdeenshire and Glasgow.

Maintaining vital public services, sustainable economic growth and investment to get people back to work, fair taxation and a commitment to rebuilding our manufacturing base will offer a alternative to the ideologically driven economic programme by the ConDem government.

The motion - and Aberdeenshire’s input (68) - stresses the need to keep plugging away at challenging the ideological attacks on services with the evidence that shows there is both a political and an economic alternative.

The union has put enormous efforts into this over the last year and in many ways has been the only mainstream opposition. In Scotland we ran a special conference in September to brief and bring together union and community activists on the alternatives under our ‘PUBLIC WORKS’ banner.

The hugely successful rallies in Edinburgh and London followed. Branches used the materials to take up the arguments locally and to build local anti-cuts alliances. They also kept pushing at the media to get our key points across.

But still there are those who believe that cuts are inevitable. We need to keep hammering away. Comp E lays out the arguments, the strategy and the campaign and should be supported.

In Motion 70, North West builds on challenging the ideological nature of the cuts and the discriminatory and unfair singling out of deprived communities, especially the local government settlements in Liverpool and Manchester. Northamptonshire’s amendment calls for a mass lobby of the Tory Party Conference in Manchester in October, echoing Manchester's call in motion 66.

Women organising against the cuts

Motion 44 from the National Women’s Committee again highlights the disproportionate effect cuts to public services have on women and in particular the cuts to Sure Start.

The strength of Sure Start in helping integration in communities is underlined as the motion campaigns against the cuts to the service.

This afternoon, Motion 34 reminds us that 65% of the public service workforce is women and sets out a list of strategies to empower women in the union and the workplace.

Training, working with service groups on work-life balance issues, gender-specific materials and leadership training are all part of the strategy to facilitate involvement not only in the union but also in community and other groups.

The NEC amendment builds on monitoring the effect of cuts on low paid women, using it to both recruit and organise.

Standing Orders mysteries exposed

The Standing Orders Committee is made up of 15 elected lay members - one from each of the Regions and three from the NEC. Scotland’s rep is Raymond Brown.

This august body (or more appropriately March or April body as you will no doubt hear throughout the week) meets in the run-up to Conference to look at motions and decide whether they meet the requirements of the union’s rules and standing orders to go on the agenda.

Which motions are prioritised for debate is decided by priorities set by Regions, NEC and self-organised groups. In Scotland we set our priorities at Scottish Council earlier in the year.

Back in December 2010, the Standing Orders Committee sent guidance to branches on how to submit motions and what mistakes to avoid to get them on the agenda.

Nevertheless, by our reckoning, 31 motions, 25 amendments and 18 Rule Amendments were ruled out of order. But there are plenty left to be getting on with.

The reasons vary from the motions being submitted too late, they are contrary to rules on employment of staff, in breach of the agreement on the political fund, putting the union in legal jeopardy or being in conflict with other rules.

One category is that the motion is ‘not sufficiently clear’. Two rejected for this reason came from Glasgow. It may have been the accent. This year Glasgow got the KB on three and West Dunbartonshire on one. Neither matched Edinburgh’s record of four in a previous year.

One Rule Amendment has been re-admitted to the agenda (No 20 on Schedule F) and six motions were referred to other bodies.

The spread of movers is pretty wide this year, including branches, regions, SOG and the NEC. Often in the past most were down to just a few branches. In fact, by our reckoning, the NEC topped the ‘out of orders’ by getting four knocked back, although they did get one accepted back on the agenda.

So let’s see some of the main reasons folk fall foul of the rules.

1. Relevance: It needs to be relevant to the union as a whole, not just one service group, unless it is a citizenship issue affecting everyone.

2. Political Fund: Because of the rules you can ‘urge’ the LabourLink to do something but not direct or instruct it (that’s up to LabourLink members). Also, you can’t change political fund rules. The members of the APF and GPF have to take these forward in the first place.

3. Putting the union in legal jeopardy: You can’t call for unlawful action. Calls for strikes have to be related to a trade dispute.

4. Ongoing legal cases: You can’t have a motion about ongoing (or sometimes past) legal cases. The SOC takes legal advice on these before deciding. This is also why equal pay motions don’t go on - because no-win-no-fee lawyers could use these against us.

5. Staff: You can’t make decisions that would affect or challenge the conditions of existing staff.

6. Amendments: Amendments can’t just contradict a motion, change it so that it just reflects current policy or change the fundamental basis of it. If you want to do any of that, you just vote against the motion.

NOTE: This is just a guide and not a definitive statement of all the standing orders complexities. But we hope it helps.

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