REAL LIVES Community
Unite is helping local activists find their voice in their communities
In a small Sheffield café Gareth Lane is on the phone. ‘Yep,’ he intones every few seconds, then hangs up, rolls his sleeves up and says, with purpose, ‘right.’
We’re in Burngreave, Sheffield. A high unemployment hotspot this is where the Muslim community meets with the city’s white residents. There are occasional tensions, drugs problems, and visible poverty. The council doesn’t seem to have shown the place much love in recent years. Things are now tattered, the grass is overgrown. Maybe it’s been neglected since the council realised it takes more than a lick of paint to resolve a city’s social problems.
Gareth (pictured right) is on the phone persuading local unemployed residents to
join Unite’s Community
Membership scheme. Anyone over 16 and not in work can join for 50p a week. Members receive a range of benefits, from a 24-hour legal helpline to discounts at high street shops.
And although those things are helpful, Gareth is really interested in is turning the unemployed of Sheffield into activists so that they can fight for trade union values – justice, dignity, fairness, solidarity. When I asked him what motivated him to become a community activist for Unite, his sense of purpose emerges again. “It just needs doing, doesn’t it? People need to re-engage in politics.”
We take the bus to the city centre for a meeting Gareth has organised in Sheffield Central Library. The grand interior is the perfect space for a meeting – open, naturally light, quiet and publicly accessible. On the wall is a Terry Jones quote, “A free library system is one of the benchmarks of a civilised society,” which seems sadly ominous given the government’s withdrawal of funding for libraries.
Pilgrim’s progress Down south in London’s Islington, activist Pilgrim Tucker, is outside her local job centre with a bundle of leaflets. Next to the job centre is an office of ATOS, the company which carries out back-to-work assessments on behalf of the government. Pilgrim looks up at the offices and frowns. Like many of our community members, she has been repeatedly shunted from pillar to post by the benefit system, and it only seems to have galvanised her as an activist. “It’s vital people start sticking up for themselves,” she says.
Pilgrim has set up a Unite community group. It’s in its early stages. She’s gently guiding its members as they form relationships with each other, learn about each others’ lives, and uncover the common issues which affect them all.
“I’ve been doing lots of outreach work,” Pilgrim says, “I’ve been talking to local unemployed people, disabled people and retired people.” Her focus is upon sharing skills and confidence building. Loyal to the principles of community
23 uniteWORKS July/August 2012
Gareth gently steers the group as it discusses how to build its membership. Every conversation is focused upon Sheffield, rather than the national picture – people have a stake in the group because its interest is in where they live.
One member of the group is keen to set up a phone tree of activists to go around and stop bailiffs evicting people from their homes. Another member offers to give advice on benefits as she has done this for years in her housing association. As I listen I wonder whether being part of such a large trade union is what smaller community groups need. Perhaps they feel able to focus on their own area because they know they’re part of a wider movement which is holding similar meetings all around the country.
BY ELLIE MAE O’HAGAN
organising, Pilgrim believes that good campaigns can only come of a group which is empowered and formed by solid, trusting relationships. When she talks about the group she’s running, she talks in terms of how members can support each other – share experiences and get around the hurdles being placed in front of unemployed people.
Community membership is a new and different way of doing trade unionism. It’s not focused around agenda-driven meetings, or big demonstrations called by the TUC. It’s grassroots-based and defined by the relationships between its members.
“It’s not a fixed project,” observes Pilgrim, “but it’s growing around the people involved. Unite has been very flexible and responsive in terms of how it interacts with its activists.”
Although membership is only open to those who are not in work, community branches are building links with industrial
branches. Working
members, often shop stewards, are volunteering to become activists so that their organising skills can be put to work in their local communities. It’s a way of taking trade unions out of the workplace and turning it into a hub, like a church or a school.
And the scheme is growing. Unite Community Support is currently rolling out training dates for its growing list of activists, as well as employing organisers to promote the scheme across selected regions. The excitement for community membership is palpable across the union – one Unite activist exclaims “about bloody time!” when I tell him about it – but it cannot be defined by shop stewards, conferences or the executive. This one is owned by ordinary people up and down the country, and what it eventually looks like is up to them.
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