Gregor Gall’s discussion paper on ‘constructing alliances to oppose cuts in and privatisation of public services’ contains much useful food for thought. The question is how much appetite there is within UNISON and other public service unions for a broad public sector alliance? The PCS/UNISON initiative in the Northern region bodes well for the approach advocated by Gall.
There’s also I think a cross-cutting question about how much we want to build some kind of overall anti-cuts/anti-privatisation/defend public services campaign that encompasses the whole range of issues (which is hard enough to do just for ourselves as Million Voices has shown) or whether a loosely coordinated medley of more focused issue-based campaigns and alliances could have more impact over the coming period (eg we already have a cross-union-plus-users Anti-Academies Alliance which could be about to become really important, or something like Robin Hood Tax which is well-targeted and links in a whole range of global justice groups). I am in two minds about this at the moment.
I think Gall’s points about Labour Party and user-campaigns are very pertinent, though on the later I think he maybe overlooks the potential importance of quite localised campaigns that often spring up quite spontaneously around particular hospitals, schools, libraries, care homes etc – they can have a real impact on local MPs (especially given current parliamentary arithmetic) but don’t get much national profile and if they do they can often appear parochial or ‘nimby-ish’ so there’s a strategic question about how much this kind of thing needs to be coordinated and given some kind of national coherence, and what the unions (and even Labour) could do to support that.
The other big question is what happens if, against this background, we find ourselves having to prioritise more defensive campaigns around issues that are inevitably more sectional like pay, pensions etc, possibly entailing industrial action, and whether this detracts from building broader social alliances around public services or whether we can maintain a synergy of some kind
MCM
For more information go to:
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-alliances-required-to-fight-cuts.html
