Kevin Parslow, branch secretary Unite LE1228, personal capacity
With general secretary Sharon Graham to speak on 9 July and key debates on Palestine and funding happening after this issue of the Socialist goes to press, early debates at the 2025 Unite the Union policy conference centred on industrial and social policy.
One of several Socialist Party and Unite Broad Left (UBL) members who spoke, Nancy Taaffe, delegate from the London and Eastern Not for Profit sector, moved a resolution calling for urgent repeal of the anti-trade union laws, including the Tory turnout thresholds. The motion, she said, “reflects our anger on the delay to the Employment Rights Bill. The delay is a joke but no one’s laughing. We need to link to a party that fights for us.” Nancy later spoke in the debate on pensions, calling for the nationalisation of pension funds.
NHS
Len Hockey moved the Barts Trust branch motion on the NHS, which outlined how cuts in the service and unrelenting privatisation was ruining our health service. The huge increase of wealth for those on the ‘Rich List’ contrasted with the 40% real-terms pay cut for health workers since 2010.
The ‘continuity’ politics of underfunding the NHS is not a mistake or miscalculation by the Starmer government, but a deliberate policy for all public services. Many delegates criticised the Labour government for not carrying out the promised ‘change’.
Len made the point that, despite the change to the resolution demanded by the Standing Orders Committee, which removed reference to Unite working with Jeremy Corbyn and all supportive MPs of whichever party or none, his branch stands for unrelenting socialist policies to end the crisis facing working people.
Continuity politics was also a feature of the debate on housing, where Ian Clements of the Unite LE1111 Housing Branch said that Thatcherite policies continued in housing, relying on the ‘market’ to provide homes, which are mainly expensive or unaffordable to most workers. He also mentioned that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for New York mayor, promised rent controls. Housing associations can also be very anti-union, he said, with attacks on reps at some.
Welfare state
Eileen Hunter from the West Midlands Health RISC (Regional Industrial Sector Committee), moved the motion opposing attacks on the welfare state. “The welfare state should be from the cradle to the grave, not just the cradle and the grave.”
Unite Broad Left supporter Oisin Mulholland – who led rent strikes at Swansea University during Covid – had also spoken in the housing debate, called for Unite to back the calls for universal free higher education.
Socialists have begun the conference by showing the way forward for a fighting Unite. There will be bigger battles during the week over how to fight capitalism domestically and internationally, but the first day has given a positive start to the conference.
