Friday, August 17, 2018

A trades council in the shadow of Grenfell Tower

By Theo Russell
Matt Wrack calls for support at the meeting
 
Local trade unionists in West London are mobilising to build support for the first AGM of a new trades union council that kicked off with a meeting in June.
Local union and community activists came together on 27th June at the Maxilla Social Club, in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, to mobilise support for the relaunch of the Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea Trades Council.
They were addressed by Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary, on the latest developments in the public inquiry, alongside Merril Hammer, Chair of Save Charing Cross Hospital, Christine Blower, former General Secretary of the NUT, and Liane Groves, Unite Community National Coordinator. The meeting was chaired by Roger Sutton from the Greater London Association of Trades Union Councils.
Veterans of the old local trades councils along with local trade union and Labour Party activists discussed how to obtain sufficient affiliations to ensure the new combined trades council, which will launch formally at the AGM on 23rd October, can survive as a viable organisation.
Matt Wrack told the meeting that: “Trades councils are at the heart of local communities, and with the fall in trade union membership are needed more than ever to build the links in order to improve peoples’ live.”
“Trade unionism is not just a top-down process, we need them to engage with local disputes and with the wider community who are not in trade unions.”
Wrack spoke at length about the impact of the fire on his members and major problems with the Grenfell Inquiry. He said that about 1,000 firefighters, almost all FBU members, had been questioned by the Metropolitan Police, some for as long as six hours.
With an FBU rep attending each interview, this had been a huge organisational challenge for the union.
He said that London Fire Brigade members were “disgusted” by the treatment of the Grenfell incident commander, Michael Dowden, and said the inquiry was starting in the wrong place by focusing on the fire itself rather than on the long list of bodies responsible for the disaster.
“Those people responsible for the tower’s cladding, the contractors and businesses who sold the materials, are not the ones being asked difficult questions, it’s the people who turned up on the night.”
Wrack said the disaster was caused not just by austerity but by the attacks on public services that began with the 1979 Thatcher government.
“Housing and safety regulations were weakened, building controls part privatised and cut to pieces, and fire regulations fragmented, with firefighters having died as a result. Since 2005, 50 per cent of fire safety officers have been lost and local government budgets have been hardest hit by austerity since 2010.
“The inquiry should look into the past cuts to council housing, public services and local authority resourcing, and the deregulation of the building industry and fire safety testing regimes.”
He added that there was “utter complacency from central government” since the fire, saying: “I have no confidence that the inquiry will bring change. The only way to do that is to organise a huge community movement – that is the only way we will get change, that is the only way we will get justice.
“The UK is the fourth richest country in the world but no longer conducts any fire safety research, and ranks 34th in fire resilience. Eleven thousand firefighters and 40 fire stations have been lost, and there are not enough crews to man the remaining fire engines.”

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