Now it is time to fight

By Angela Lynes, President of UNISON

The attacks on UNISON members launched during my time as union president have been unprecedented, both in intensity and in their number. You only have to have a passing glance at the order of business at our conference in Manchester to see that we are under assault on all fronts.

On pensions, the government is determined to hit us with a triple whammy: they want us to pay more, work longer and then get less when we retire. The economy is being dragged back towards recession by a chancellor who refuses to accept the need for a Plan B despite all the evidence that his Plan A is not working. There is a refusal to learn from the pain experienced by our sisters and brothers in Greece, Portugal and Ireland, where austerity has simply driven the economy into ever-deeper crisis. Instead growth has stalled and is even stopping the government from hitting its own deficit targets.

It is counter-productive. Self-defeating. And wrong. And the effect is felt every day by real people. Unemployment is huge, homelessness is on the rise, and spiralling inflation has meant that the poorest are once again the hardest hit.

But it doesn’t stop there. One of the ways the government thinks it can save cash is by parcelling as many of our public services off to the private sector as possible. This is despite the warnings we’ve had in recent weeks from the appalling conditions at the private hospital in Bristol covered by the Panorama programme – and thank goodness it is now going to close. And from the fact that more than 30,000 elderly people face huge uncertainty about whether they will be turfed out onto the streets if Southern Cross goes bust.

But these failures have not been taken on board – quite the opposite. The government now wants to do the same with the NHS in England and other key public services. This is more sick society than Big Society.

My proudest moment of the past 12 months, when I was able to lead off the national march and demonstration with Dave Prentis in London on March 26th. It was a wonderful day that really did show our union in all its glory. Purple and green as far as the eye could see. UNISON members with balloons, banners and placards filling up the streets.

And our campaign marches on. Back in December the NEC approved the use of £20 million pounds to set up the UNISON Fighting Fund. Half of this is ringfenced for industrial action, with £5.5 million for the general fighting fund and £4.5 million for the general political fund.

And our local campaigns are really taking off now, with already around half a million pounds allocated to regions, but also – and crucially – branches across the union are stepping up to the mark and together committing hundreds of thousands of their own funds to help match some of these central allocations.

As I have said, the scale of the challenge we face is massive. We can rise to meet it if we improve our density and ensure that we continue to grow as a union. We should be confident in our ability to do this.

As a note to finish on, last year at Conference I said that our mantra should be “never show your fear, always show your fight”. Well this year, the fear is evident – now it is time to fight.