johninnit

It’s expected that the Westminster expenses scandal will earn major parties a thumping at this week’s elections, with UKIP one of the main winners, and the worrying possibility that the BNP could pick up their first seat in Strasbourg.

As others have noted though, a big reason these parties are untainted by the other’s dodgy claims woes is not that they’ve taken a principled stand away from the trough, but because they couldn’t, as they’ve not actually been voted anywhere near it in the first place. (more…)

Thanks to the tenacious Lancaster UAF blog for this story about the BNP-linked union Solidarity’s latest campaign.

A County Durham teacher and former BNP candidate, Mark Walker, has been suspended for something related to computer misuse. Solidarity claim it was the innocent popular past-time of visiting the BNP’s website. The head claims it was something else. Lancaster UAF’s rumour mill suggests looking at far-right sites whilst he should have been teaching.

A nice illustration of the personal surfing in the workplace story from last week. It’s not unreasonable to be allowed to use the web in your own time at work, and a good employer will have a policy to support this, albeit with a couple of important caveats:

• So long as it’s your *own* time. That means breaktime, downtime, however your employer defines it. Their definition is unlikely to include “on the clock” or whilst you’re really supposed to be teaching for example.
• So long as what you do on the web isn’t something which could damage your employer or cause offence, like, ooh erm I don’t know… accessing racist and offensive material online maybe?

Unfortunately for Walker, as a member of Solidarity, rather than one of the proper (and recognised) teaching unions, his support is coming from the presumably rather overworked Pat Harrington and in lieu of sympathetic colleagues from the union branch, a motley crew from the BNP, their front groups, and adverts on nazi chatrooms, who popped down to hassle the school on the first day of term.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Walker’s alleged activities put him in a rather different boat from the rest of the nation’s lunchbreak surfers, so if he goes (deservedly) down, he shouldn’t spoil the office daily poke for everyone.

Solidarity, the right nationalist ‘trade union’, might not be nearly as much use to their members as a real union, but they are at least excelling in one area – splits and squabbles.

Over the past week, a very entertaining story has been emerging. It seems that Pat Harrington, General Secretary (and occasional commenter to this blog), has been suspended from his post by the President Clive Potter and Vice-Prez Tim Hawke, amidst allegations of financial irregularities. Apparently, the accounts the union needs to supply to the Certification Officer are delayed, after Potter believed the version of the accounts Harrington showed him was too unclear, and refused to sign them without seeing the full accounts. Hawke claims that an un-named Merseyside BNP member has been appointed Acting GS, until a new GS is found, and that the BNP are planning a hostile takeover of the union.

Harrington unsurprisingly has a different take on this, and as he still has the keys to the website, he’s letting everyone know about it by calling for an EGM in July to appoint a new (and larger) executive (Hawke is amusingly reduced to getting his message out via the Lancaster Unite Against Fascism blog). Harrington says that he and the BNP leadership believe that the troubles, and a leadership challenge, are being orchestrated by well organised far-left undercover saboteurs within the union. The BNP has in the meantime stopped recommending members to join the union.

What is going on? Both these explanations sound a little fishy. If there’s been any embezzlement going on, it’s rather cheap stuff, given the union has at most 100 subs paying members and can’t have any cash to speak of. Otherwise, Sherlock Holmes’ maxim could have us believing that any far-left groups are well organised enough to have done this.

And what does this bode for Harrington’s claims that Solidarity are BNP independent? If the BNP are now considering a takeover, maybe they were indeed more separated than most people thought (though won’t be very soon if the EGM goes ahead). Though how to square this with his claim on the union’s site that the accounts were audited by Kenny Smith (head of BNP admin) yet not shown to Hawke and Potter, and Harrington’s objection that the new AGS is not a BNP member of good standing?

Hat tip: Lancaster UAF
Bonus entertainment: Clive Potter is in the news again – from Unity

Well, I must have made it in some way, as I’ve had my first blog visit from an actual union leader! Interestingly though it’s from Patrick Harrington, President of the new ‘British Workers’ Union’, Solidarity.

Patrick (very politely) takes issue with three of my posts, which refer to his union, and has left me some comments to state his case:

• A solidarity of one?
• Sullied-arity
• Euro out of here!

He does indeed pull me up correctly on a factual blunder (Solidarity don’t yet have a certificate of independence) and on making too little explanation on why I think Solidarity members will be assumed to be BNP supporters, but I’ve tried to answer his other points in a similar spirit.

True – there are no direct links between Solidarity and the BNP. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence; co-membership by senior figures in Solidarity (though not Patrick himself), the BNP have welcomed and supported the union, and a BNP spokesperson claimed it would quite likely raise funds for the party (though his comments were disowned by Solidarity). So it certainly looks like a BNP front, but can’t be totally proven as such.

It also follows that they certainly won’t restrict membership to BNP supporters, but the close perceived association between the two organisations, and the likelihood that the current high levels of BNP internal publicity for the union means that many early members are BNP supporters, will I believe cause a lot of people who aren’t BNP (or at least other right nationalist) supporters to be extremely reluctant to have anything to do with it, for fear they will be assumed to be a supporter too.

The recent ASLEF legal win on their right to expel a BNP activist doesn’t mean that there’s no longer any point for political dissidents in joining unions – just those political dissidents whose political activities are in direct opposition to the union’s platform.

Patrick believes that unions should be speaking out about the impact of Eastern European migrant workers, which he believes is depressing working conditions for others. I’d counter that this is exactly what many unions are doing, based on principles of solidarity – the ideal rather than the union . Defend migrants from exploitation by bad bosses and demand the same conditions for them. Tackle undercutting in this way and you’ll be safeguarding better conditions for everyone.

Well, after pondering last week as to why the BNP wanted to set up their own union, it’s become clear in a very welcome way. They aren’t going to be getting into any others anytime soon.

The European Court of Human Rights has just ruled today that unions can legitimately expel BNP members, thanks to a case brought by ASLEF. You can see (download, print, frame…) the ruling here.

They found that whilst BNP members did have a right to freedom of association, this worked in reverse too, and didn’t need to compromise the rights of those who wanted the freedom not to have to associate with people whose aims were directly opposed to the aims of their union.

Plus ASLEF get €53,900 compensation from the UK Government, which goes some way to redress after the UK tribunal made them take back their expelled BNP member, or face a fine of up to nearly twice that sum.

Result! I for one will be raising a glass of something suitably European this evening.

Further to my recent post on the BNP union, Solidarity, and Skuds’ comment, I was interested to find this old news release (”Solidarity’s right wing friends“) from South African union federation COSATU, concerning South Africa’s own Solidarity union, and accusations that they are trying to maintain old “whites-only” job policies.

I’d thought the BNP union was a bit of a slur on the Polish Solidarity (Solidarnosc) pinching both their name and their logo (Odd given that the party aren’t that keen on Polish workers coming here, just their union!) . Maybe though they’ve found another Solidarity to draw inspiration from.

I visited Solidarnosc in Gdansk last year, and was rather taken by a display in Gdansk’s Lech Walesa Airport (the only union GS I know of with his own airport!). It has a picture of newsreel footage on the faces of dominoes, with 25 years of oppressive regimes around the world tumbling in the face of people power, and the very neat slogan: “Today was born in Gdansk”. Inspiring stuff, and a very long way from anything their ignoble new namesakes are likely to achieve.

This weekend, the BNP’s trade union, Solidarity, gains its certificate of independence, and can practice as a union. It’s an interesting move, but I really can’t work out why they are trying to do this.

For starters, their members will never get the full benefits of being in a union. Crudely put, there are three levels of membership, with increasing benefits – first off being the only member in a workplace, where you can get advice from the national union and have someone represent you in disciplinaries, kind of like joining the AA for work. Second level is getting a good group of you, to get safety in numbers when dealing with management, which counts for a lot in enforcing your rights. Third level is recognition, with a properly established local base in the workplace, and rights to negotiate collectively with the employer.

No real company in the UK is going to recognise them voluntarily – the press would be horrendous, and an employer in such a situation would probably immediately voluntarily recognise any other union, as the ‘lesser of evils’. They’ll never get down the statutory route, as that’d involve getting over half the bargaining unit in the union. The BNP is an actively divisive force, so even if they do get a clique together, they will be severely handicapped in the majority numbers game if they’re alienating groups of potential members even before they start.

Unions are expensive to run if you want to do it at all properly. Even more so if you’re setting up and trying to build. In their case it’s more of a recipe for losing money than for making any to pass on to the BNP as a political fund. Now this is just wild speculation, but I think someone coming out as a BNP’er in a workplace is going to be stirring up a lot of trouble for themselves with management, and coupled with the unpleasant pasts of lots of their activists (probably their only members for a while), the union will probably end up fighting loads of expensive cases they can’t win, draining their cash and making themselves look impotent to prospective members.

Some people think it’s a way for the BNP to gain legitimacy, in being closely identified with a useful organ of mainstream civil society. Seems odd though that they’d choose a type of organ that their political platform seems fundamentally opposed to as ‘marxists’. If they want to build themsleves closer into their members’ communities, there are easier and cheaper ways – set up youth schemes, credit unions, neighbourhood watches. Hey, for the same money they could probably go for a city academy!

Only immediate benefit I see for them is that this is a potential way for them to try to keep some of their nastier people in jobs they might otherwise lose, as they wouldn’t be given the support of a proper union.

On top of all this, I love the fact they’ve ripped off the Solidarnosc logo for their own. Never guessed they’d be so mad keen on bringing all things Polish into the UK workplace.