Conference: Simpson Attacks the Left

Ian Rez, health sector delegate, reports on the Unite (Amicus section) Conference in Bournemouth on 18^th-20^th June 2007

This was the first Amicus policy conference since the formation of the new “super” union UNITE, the merger of Amicus and the T&GWU, which came into being on May 1^st. Each union still has its own policy conference this year with the T&G conference being the first week in July.

The last Amicus Rules and Policy Conference was held two years ago and was the first Amicus Conference for the whole union since the merger between the AEEU and MSF to form Amicus, therefore this conference was the last ever Amicus conference which would be held.

The conference was opened by a very long speech from the General Secretary, Derek Simpson. (He makes these very long speeches without any notes and must take lessons from Fidel Castro!). His speech lasted nearly two hours and didn’t have much substance to it, mainly going on about globalisation and the need to merge with other unions in other countries to create a global union to deal with global companies (there are preliminary merger talks with the United Steel Workers Union who operate in Canada and the USA as well as IG Metal in Germany).

Extraordinarily, he used the end of his speech to attack the principled, small group of Left National Executive Committee (NEC) members who have stood by the Unity Gazette policies, unlike the majority of Unity Gazette NEC members who support Simpson’s views irrespective of the Left platform on which they were elected. (Unity Gazette is the so called “broad Left” organisation in the union). Simpson accused these Left NEC members of wanting to “destroy the union” and seemed to suggest that there would be a witch hunt of the Left in the union.

There was a question and answer session with Simpson after his speech at which Ted Knight (a London delegate) asked him why the NEC gave its supporting nomination to Gordon Brown for the Labour Party leadership instead of supporting John McDonnell, who stood for the policies of the union, given that the NEC was actively supporting Crudas for deputy leader. Simpson’s reply was that he had “inside” information that John couldn’t get the 45 nominations needed to get on the ballot paper and therefore he was a “no-hoper”. Also, Simpson said that he could have a better relationship with Brown if he didn’t have a go at him!

There were very few policy motions that the NEC didn’t support, so there was very little debate at what was a rather bland and for the most part, a boring conference. Most of these motions were composites and were just moved and seconded and went straight to the vote with either being passed unanimously or with very few hands against.

One of the most controversial motions was from London on Arms Manufacture which opposed the replacement of Trident and the manufacture of arms which are used in US led wars. It called for the reduction in the dependence of the UK economy on arms manufacture and for diversification for the manufacture of socially useful products to protect our member’s jobs who work in the arms industry. The NEC opposed this motion in favour of their statement which was very cleverly worded to oppose Trident but in effect meant nothing would happen until the Government gives a firm commitment to provide alternative jobs for our members working in the arms industry.

During the debate on the Arms Manufacture motion a number of our members working in the arms industry came to the rostrum to speak against it and instead to support the NEC statement. This was clearly pre-arranged in order to defeat the motion with most speakers repeating the false claim that if the motion was passed thousands of our members would be put out of a job. Also, in order be sure to defeat this motion the NEC used a manoeuvre of allowing the NEC speaker on their statement the right of reply, after the mover of the motion had exercised his right of reply. This was against the Conference Standing Orders which only allows the mover of a motion the right of reply. When challenged about this on a point of order, the Chair, Steve Davison, claimed that this procedure was allowed at the last policy conference and he then got the conference delegates to agree it on a show of hands. Needless to say, the motion was defeated and the NEC subsequently used this manoeuvre to help defeat other motions that it opposed.

To be expected, Gordon Brown addressed the conference on Monday afternoon. After his speech, which emphasised that he was Labour through and through in order to distance himself from Blair and in my view, failed to give any commitments whatsoever, there was a stage managed question and answer session. The questions came from all sections of the union and the one that caused Brown the most problem was from the Health Section which asked him why the 2.5% pay award to health workers wasn’t being paid in full as recommended by the Pay Review Body. His answer was that nurses were getting a fair increase because of their 4% increments in pay due to Agenda for Change. This was greeted with shouts of “rubbish” especially from the health sector delegation, which was extremely angry with his reply. He was so taken aback that he agreed to meet with some health delegates after the close of conference that day and said that he would look into the situation.

Unity Gazette held a social at which Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley (joint General Secretaries of UNITE) spoke to the “Left” in the union. This was quite a small meeting at which Simpson again had another go at the Left which included an outrageous personal attack on Ted Knight during a question and answer session after Simpson’s speech. Conversely Tony Woodley spoke very well at this meeting, talking about building a fighting union in support of its members. He later got a standing ovation at the Conference when he repeated some of this speech the next day.

Other conference speakers that were very well received were Leo Gerrard, the International President of the United Steel Workers, Randall Howard from the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union and Doug Cameron from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. I suspect that UNITE may eventually merge with all of these three unions.

Whilst it’s not possible here to report all the motions taken at the conference UNITE remains in general a union with many progressive Left policies, except for those important ones that the NEC don’t want, like the repeal of anti-trade union laws, against the replacement of Trident, support of arms manufacture etc. It’s clear that the Joint General Secretary, Derek Simpson and his complaint supporters on the NEC do not want to challenge Brown with the hope that they can gain some concessions from him like they claim to have done with Blair and the Warwick agreement. As for the Left in the union, Unity Gazette has become controlled by Simpson and his supporters including Steve Davidson, who as well as being Chair of Conference and of the NEC, is also the Chair of Unity Gazette. Well sewn up.

The Left will need to make contact with the T&G Left in order to change this situation and maybe UNITE needs a new Left organisation which will be independent of the present Amicus Unity Gazette organisation.

Ian Rez

Health Section Conference Delegate

(In a personal capacity)

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