Civil servants will fight - and win! IT WAS A POSITIVE move to organise a meeting of the English mobilising committee for the European Social Forum in Newcastle upon Tyne, where local UNISON activists have already booked 50 hotel rooms for the forthcoming events in Paris from November 12-15.
The Northern region of UNISON also sent a sizeable delegation to Florence last year and, in particular through its international committee, has been keen to build real grassroots links with those fighting privatisation across the continent.
Around 30 activists found their way to the Marlborough Social Club to parscottish socialist VoIce Subscribe to the Voice
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Or telephone us: 0141-221 7714 vacuum on the left and it is the Scottish Socialist Party who will fill it. • The Voice will be carrying regular reports from the SSP's
six MSPs.
ticipate in discussions on the strengths
and weaknesses of Florence, and how
we could input into Paris. While the
majority were from the North East,
there were also a couple of people
from Leeds and a handful from
London.
Concretely the meeting agreed to try
to bid for four seminars in Paris.
Activists in the North East will flesh out
proposals on two of these: on privatisation and on gentrification of working
class communities.
On a third, the fight against racism
and fascism, it was agreed to
approach the Committee to Defend
Asylum Seekers, and the Anti-Nazi
League.
involving activists groups in trade Paul McGowan DWP. ist Voice, 73 Ro create to Scori Sectal The Labour Party has created a
be complacent. KEN LOACH, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH THE VOICE
unions was also highlighted. The final didn't receive any detailed consideraassumed that the Stop the War Coalition would put together more detailed proposals - but also because it is difficult to know now precisely what the focus of such a meeting in November will need to be. The meeting endorsed Jonathan Neale and Asad Rehman as English representatives on the Programme committee and added Claire Williams, from Northern region UNISON. al planning meetings are open to all The importance of organising committee meeting will
take place in Manchester before the from Black members next international planning meeting in
Genoa in July. The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) conference for members in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) took place in Scarborough on May 21-22. A third of PCS's 280,000 members work for the
The right wing Moderate faction was invisible, having recently lost almost all their seats on the Union's DWP Group Executive. Left Unity narrowly won 32 out of the 36 seats.
However, the left cannot afford to
The Moderates are stronger in other Union groups and Left Unity will need an improved vote amongst DWP members in the NEC elections to break the Moderates' hisocla stance June 2003 3
page 3 of the scan