proceed and for developing our movement. We need to encourage cross-union coordination between existing grass roots bodies, shop stewards committees etc. aiming to build a network of activists capable of delivering practical solidarity action.
At the same time this means pushing to improve the conditions in each union for the development of independent grass roots activity -Barry Camfield of the T&G (cynically) said at the RMT conference, "we need to change the centre of gravity towards shop floor representatives".
Through this practical experience we have to fight for workplace reps to recognise the need to look beyond their own immediate concerns. around work on the aims of the OFU charter - promoting existing campaigns around
etc, well the planned trade union delegation to Venezuela.
The National Shop Stewards Network, whilst aiming to be a rank and file body, is necessarily operating within an official framework, reliant on official trade union support in the first instance. It needs rapidly to develop wider support and sponsorship to give it an independent financial and organisational base.
In the opposite Organising for Fighting Unions is effectively reliant on the trade union base of the SWP. Question marks arise over how the regional rallies will be organised.
We need to fight for an inclusive practice. Again, the real solution to overcoming Danny Boyd Unity in action by trade unionists can be a splendid thing to behold: but when the unity consists of inaction the doubts inevitably start to creep in.
The alliance of over a dozen trade unions and professional bodies spanning the entire NHS workforce into the NHS Together organisation, under the aegis of the TUC, appeared to offer a way of pulling the more reluctant organisations into more active campaigning against a government agenda of privatisation, job cuts and rationalisation in the NHS.
The whole period from April to the end of last year was marked by an increasingly drastic tide of NHS cuts, job losses and threatened closures, accompanied by a constipated silence from the unions, which effectively agreed that doing nothing was their favoured policy.
NHS Together did not so much challenge this as allow the most conservative and reluctant organisations to dictate the limits on what could be done.
Nevertheless NHS Together seemed to have had the positive impact of drawing UNISON into support for a joint lobby of Parliament on November 1 - until it became clear that UNISON was using the opportunity to scrap some of its own hard-hitting publicity against cuts and privatisation in favour of the anodyne formulae favoured by the Royal College of Nursing and other professional bodies.
The lobby was followed by increasingly heated debate over whether NHS Together should press ahead as originally agreed with a national demonstration in
March, or scale back to a day of local and regional protests. together UNISON,
having initially given Working for a better health service the
impression that it favoured a national protest began, not to build up momentum for a national movement of protest, but frantically back-pedalling, carrying out a "consultation" of branches asking secretaries to estimate precisely how many members could be brought on to a national march in London.
The sadly predictable conclusion - just before the Christmas break - was that the March 3 Day of Action should consist of local protests rather one national march.
Prentis and co may feel that by containing the pressure tor national action they are taking the heat off Labour in the runup to the May's local elections, which threaten to be a disaster.
But their loyalty to Blair and his team is not reciprocated in any way at all, and the result will be a continuing series of cuts, closures and compulsory redundancies - accompanied by the angry departure of frustrated union members.
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Detained migrants: