.

Many GMB members will be grieving this week on hearing of the death on Wednesday of the union’s president, Mary Turner. Her health has been poor for quite a while, and had recently taken a turn for the worse, so the news was half expected, but nevertheless the huge and genuine affection that GMB activists and members hold for Mary means that it still feels like a tremendous shock.

Mary was an exceptional president of GMB, and anyone who has ever been a delegate to a GMB Congress will remember her warmth and generosity in empowering the lay members of the union to shape the union’s destiny through its sovereign decision making body. She has been in the role since 1997, and expertly provided encouragement and support for delegates who need it, while providing firm and no nonsense guidance for those of us who should know better. Given the poor state of her health, Mary’s assured performance chairing the union’s 2017 Congress in Plymouth this year was remarkable, and demonstrates the strength and bravery that we all admire so much.

She was also a tough and principled shop floor activist, in her own right, who had been a campaigner for free and nutritional school meals for all children long before celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver took up the issue. Indeed Mary starred in a Labour Party political broadcast on the subject in 1982. During the 1990s Mary and her colleagues fought a long battle with Brent council over school meals provision. Mary personified the best of GMB’s ethos that every worker, whether an engineer in a nuclear power plant, a cleaner in the NHS, a call centre worker or a solicitor is worthy of equal respect and dignity.

Mary herself had to overcome prejudice and opposition in what had been an overwhelmingly male dominated union, though she was supported by the legendary London Regional secretary, John Cope.

She built her own personal standing and authority as a formidable character and trade unionist who always had the interests of GMB and its members as her first priority. It was to no small extent her achievement that, following the 2004 turmoil over allegations of ballot rigging by former General Secretary, Kevin Curran, the union survived and emerged stronger.

Mary represented all that is the best of GMB, and all that is the best of the labour movement. She will be sorely missed

GMB, the trade union for school support staff, will be leafleting parents outside Christ the King School in Amesbury calling for the Headteacher, Mr Jerome McCormack to be suspended while serious allegations about an incident at the school are investigated.

The protest will take place at 2:45 pm on Tuesday 11th July at the following location:

Christ the King Roman Catholic Primary School
45 Earls Court Road
Amesbury
Salisbury SP4 7LX

Carole Vallelly, GMB Regional Organiser says: “A serious incident occurred at the school on 25th May. It has been reported to the police, who are investigating. On 5th June, GMB trade union advised Wiltshire County Council HR department of the incident and requested that the headteacher be suspended as a question of urgency, due to the serious nature of the allegations, and that because Mr McCormack is in a position of authority over the witnesses to the incident, then his continued presence at the school while the investigation took place would compromise the integrity of the investigation.

“On a previous occasion, GMB and teaching unions approached the school governors to discuss what was reported to us as the overbearing attitude of Mr McCormack towards staff, which gives us further concern that his continued presence at the school would compromise the willingness of witnesses to speak freely. Furthermore, in GMB’s considerable experience of dealing with schools, we have never known a school to fail to suspend a member of staff facing allegations of similar seriousness. It seems there is one rule for headteacher’s, and another rule for staff. Under employment law, suspension is a neutral act, so the school governors would not have been pre-judging the investigation by suspending him. Nevertheless, the perverse decision was taken by the chair of governors, Mary Hrekow, not to suspend Mr McCormack.

“Furthermore, as a trade union we asked for the risk assessment which should have been prepared prior to the activity during which the incident occurred, and we have not been provided with one, and the Chair of Governors has failed to answer our query to confirm that a risk assessment was even done. No timely Health and Safety investigation was carried out either, and GMB has therefore reported the incident, and the failings of the response by the governors, to the Health and Safety Executive.

“GMB also believes that the School Governors and the Head teacher may have failed to properly discharge their duties under fire prevention regulations in connection with the incident.

“In all my years as a trade union officer, this is one of the most extraordinary and disturbing incidents that I have been involved with. It is our belief that there is a strong case that the school’s chair of governors has not acted as she could reasonably be expected to act in the interests of staff and pupil safety.

“We believe that the only way to restore confidence is for the head teacher to be suspended immediately, and a new investigation to be undertaken from scratch that is not compromised by participation of those governors and HR advisors who have seemingly prejudged the issue, and decided that it was not serious enough to warrant suspension

One of the aspects of contemporary politics worth remarking upon is that we are experiencing the rise of a mass movement. This has all sorts of cultural expressions and cross overs.

The heroism of the fire fighters at Grenfell, and the similar heroism of police dealing with terrorist incidents like the London Bridge attack, have naturally thrown a light on the government cuts to emergency service funding, and to the 1% pay cap on public sector pay. Particularly in the case of the Fire Brigades Union, but also with the Police Federation, the trade unions of these workers have inserted themselves into the public debate.

The horror of the Grenfell inferno has imprinted itself on our collective consciousness, but just as strongly the importance that firefighters ran into that blazing building and put themselves in harms way to save other people.

Hope Not Hate produce a very fine beer, called Trade Union Pale Ale, and as an act of appreciation they donated the remainder of the last batch to firefighters (pictured above). A brilliant move.

A new batch is in production.

It is a very good beer. In the way of many modern craft beers it is deliberately presented a little cloudy. The first batches had a rather sharp taste, which I thought very good, apparently the recipe has been changed to be slightly less sharp, but I am sure it will still be delicious. For those who like to know such things, it is 4.5% ABV, brewed by 3 Sods Brewery in London. I understand that it will be available at Durham Gala and Tolpuddle Festival.

Follow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/BrigadistaAle

Pity The Woman Made of Wood

Crowned temporary Empress
of this tragic bit of chipboard floating
off the northernmost coast
of what used to be Europe.

Open please your hearts, empty your heads
and pretend not to notice the predictable few
disfigured old bastards who operate her,
yanking the all too visible wires
that make her jaws clack
awkwardly up and down. Pity please
this woman made of wood
now she’s too well understood
and gets all the kicks and expletives,
when she tries to speak about
anything other than the quarterly accounts.

Her back burdened and bent.
Respect please the enormity
of the pearls she must bear
about her splintering neck.
And don’t be behind with the rent
or petition her to save you when you again
characteristically fail to save yourself.

When smoke curls black under your door
you can snore on unperturbed in your narrow little bed,
bought with a pay-day loan obtained – quite legally –
from a bloke reputed to give defaulters
cement flip-lops for Christmas, to take them safely
down one of the larger pipes that joyfully
pour shit into the River Styx.

But the woman made of wood,
must at all costs avoid
unguarded flames for she would go up
like a cheap deckchair that picked the wrong
day to go sunbathing at Hiroshima.

Think of this, please, when bawling
your lucky human screams
as the fire arrives quite matter-of-fact
to oxidise you to a small hill of ashes
around what looks like
a collar bone. No such luck
for the woman made of wood.

KEVIN HIGGINS

THE galloping economic crisis around the world has turned all the market arguments of the 1970s and ’80s firmly on their head.

The 1976 Labour government’s capitulation to International Monetary Fund conditions politically cleared the way for the Tories to win the 1979 election.

Thatcher then declared war on industrial Britain, with the successive destructions of the shipbuilding, engineering and mining industries.

The Labour Party moved to the left after 1979. But now those who chimed in with the right wing, saying that the 1983 manifesto was the longest suicide note in history, should think again.

A very interesting part of that manifesto proposed the establishment of a national investment bank and suggested that the Bank of England exercise much closer control over bank lending policies, with its development plans being agreed with the government.

The manifesto also proposed the creation of a public bank through the post offices and a securities commission to regulate the City’s institutions. It called for a new pensions scheme that would give rights to trustees and contributors to control the investment strategies of pension funds.

The last paragraph of this section of the manifesto also made it clear that any banks that failed to co-operate in the national interest fully would be taken into public ownership.

Following the election, the Tories continued with their free-market strategy and, when Labour finally defeated them in the 1997 election, there was a very big change of mood.

The New Labour government did dramatically increase investment in health and education and made some valuable reforms, such as the Human Rights Act and the Minimum Wage Act. However, with Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Blair as Prime Minister, Labour resolutely refused to end the Tory strategy of deregulation.

New Labour used its influence in Europe and on the board of the World Bank and the IMF to continue the development of free markets and globalisation through free trade.

Peter Mandelson, while European trade commissioner, presided over a strategy to enforce an open-market policy on developing countries which enabled globalised business to dominate vulnerable markets and destroy local industries and agriculture.

The crisis that has developed over the past three months has been a long time coming and has been essentially brought about by excessive levels of consumer debt and the massive US federal debt.

In order to avoid a complete meltdown of the banking system, governments all over the world are now either taking outright ownership of failing banks or taking a substantial equity share in them.

All governments are currently pumping billions into bank loans so that the internal lending system can be revived between financial institutions.

The problem now becomes political. Brown and Alistair Darling claim to have saved the banking industry from total collapse and the only interference in the workings of the banks that they have made is to try to control executive pay and bonuses.

We have also seen a rather limp statement from the housing minister, asking them to slow down on repossessions of the properties of people with mortgage arrears.

The stark reality is that the free-market system has brought about this crisis and the competition rules of the European Union have already been torn up with respect to banking. It is time to draw from this lesson and make changes.

Jeremy correctly predicts housing crisis, 9 years ago

NEW LABOUR’S reliance on the market to solve all problems has come a cropper. The government is currently building fewer houses for social rent than at any time since the 1920s.

Since all developments in the pipeline are effectively “add-on” to private-sector developments, it’s likely that there will be a housing shortage for those in need in the near future.

We urgently need to invest in new building, providing local authorities with the powers and funds to purchase properties facing repossession and to buy unsold private-sector homes and turn them into council tenancies.

It is also clear that many industries and companies are facing short-term financial problems and, therefore, unemployment is beginning to rise.

Without rapid intervention by central government, we will see a repeat of the devastating rates of unemployment of the 1980s, at the height of Thatcherism.

This is not an isolated issue that only faces western European economies — the global effects are enormous.

A very disturbing report from the UN food and agricultural association showed that one billion people are now desperately hungry because they can’t afford food. In other words, one in six of the world’s population is now starving.

Over the past month, there have been very welcome developments and discussions about what a socialist economy would look like in this country and on a wider scale.

Free-market capitalism and deregulation have created the hunger, poverty, misery and insecurity that many people are facing. Surely it is now time to explain that the role of the political system and of central government is to ensure that everyone has food, work, housing, health and welfare available for them.

The solutions are at hand — fully nationalising the banks, taking failing rail companies into public ownership, protecting public services from cuts, increasing pensions and benefits to help reinflate the economy, putting huge resources into conquering the misery of homelessness and overcrowding that so many families face.

Globally, the peace and anti-war movement has shown that people can and do work across frontiers to achieve a common aim. We have to use the same spirit to conquer the global hunger and poverty brought about by the madness of free market global capitalism.