UNITE jobs demo in Birmingham: Lots of hot air from Simpson & Woodley but little prospect of a real fight

The centre of Birmingham was briefly awash with thousands of red "Unite the Union" flags yesterday, as members of Britain's largest trades union, along with their families, and small contingents from the UNISON and the PCS unions, marched together through the city centre to protest against increasing jobs losses in Britain's manufacturing industries.

The highly colourful, almost 'corporate' style event, which was impressive to the eye, and which appeared considerably bigger than it in fact was as a result of that, and which also attracted reasonably good, though disproportionate national media coverage given its size (unfortunately more of ex-CBI Head Digby Jones than Derek Simpson & Tony Woodley), attracted at best 5000 protestors - a paltry number in reality for a national mobilisation, when one considers the union's almost two million strong membership, and even taking on board the trades union movement's historically low-ebb in terms of militancy, reflected in the number of working days lost throughout strikes and other actions, etc.

This still low level of trades union militancy, and lack of confidence at a grassroots level, has the greater bearing I believe, for the low level of support for the event, particularly when compared with trades union mobilisations of the 1980's and earlier, but at the same time could have been substantially bigger had the Union's national leaders, national and regional full-time officials, and the Union's entire apparatus done more to mobilise support for it at a grassroots level, something which clearly wasn't done in the North West, going off how few UNITE members actually travelled to the event from the Wigan (11) and Manchester area (less than 20) which is abysmally low by any standards.

The question of course is one of leadership, of rather the lack of it, arising from the fear by our dynamic duo of General Secretaries and their respective entourages, that the encouragement of too much grassroots activity might possibly get out of hand and as a consequence threaten their own positions, especially given their own generally perfidious roles in dispute after dispute, and/or in relation to the best of the union's existing executive (such that there are any that I can see) - appear to have a complete lack of perspective as to what needs to be done to actually defend the union's members in the face of the inevitable attacks they're likely to be confronted with in the months ahead.

The presence of TV cameras from the BBC and Sky TV at the concluding rally, as well as reporters from several national daily newspapers, in combination with Woodley and Simpson's alleged 'sensible left' credentials would also perhaps explain to some extent the subdued vocal criticism, such that there was much of it, by the crowd of what was said by both at the Rally, which in reality will inevitably amount to little in terms of real action when compared with the huge volume of 'hot air' effused by both, this if only because a lot of what they said, in relation to the state interventing to save jobs is very much at odds with existing Government policy and EU law, neither of which Woodley or Simpson have any real intention of ever challenging. But what the hell it sounded good on the telly!

Indeed as someone who has recently become unemployed and who now has to live on £63.40 a week job seeker's allowance I couldn't help thinking how easy it is for the likes of Simpson, and Woodley, the latter of whom likes to start his speeches with the words "Comrades", to say that they're against this and for that, and how they're going to fight for this or that, when the reality would likely be they'd do pathetically little to help me or any other member in the same boat as me, for the £100k a year they get paid by the Union (plus God knows how much in 'expenses") .

The reality of the matter is that Woodley and Simpson however left-wing or militant some people might be deluded into thinking they are actually part of the problem and not at all a part of the solution, for although they say they're against much of what the Government is doing, they actually prop it up financially and organisationally whatever it does, and are therefore culpable with everything it does.

As a rank and file I think need to build up a campaign within the union to expose and challenge these cynical left fakers, as well as those who support them. If we are going to successfully resist the attacks our union members are going to face in the coming months, then we are going to need is a new militant leadership for the union; new militant leaders prepared to break the union's links with Labour if they continue their current path of trying to make ordinary working people pay for the crisis, and ones prepared to mobilise the full strength of the membership, including where necessary in defiance of the anti-trades union laws, to defend members, jobs, pay and conditions as and when that is required.

In Birmingham unfortunately, all we got was a some fine sounding sentiments and a lot of hot air, but perhaps a recognition by some of the difficult but necessary tasks ahead of us.

Steve Hall