REPORT: Greece solidarity meeting in Finchley

Below is the press release put out after the Greece solidarity meeting we held last week. "We" is Barnet trades council (TUC) and the Barnet Alliance, btw.

It was a fascinating meeting. I wrote some extensive notes for friends that couldn't make it, but I'll spare you my cod-Trotskyist analysis of Syriza! I hope that the video will surface on YouTube at some point. London Greek Radio were present and someone was making a film of the event.

Press release: Greece solidarity meeting, 7 June

Fifty people attended a meeting on Thursday 7 June called to show solidarity with the Greek people in their resistance to cuts and privatisation. The title of the meeting was “Solidarity with the Greek people: if they win we can all win”. It was organised by Barnet Alliance for Public Services, Barnet TUC, and the Greek Cypriot party AKEL, at the Greek Cypriot Community Centre in North Finchley.

The issue of privatisation in particular is very close to the concerns of residents of Barnet, as our council plans to outsource almost all council services to two large companies, in a privatisation programme they call “One Barnet”.

Speakers at the meeting included Professor Costas Douzinas, who laid out the position of the left coalition Syriza, which is contending for power in the general election to be held in Greece on Sunday 17 June. Also speaking were Charis Polycarpou, a member of AKEL’s Economic Research Bureau, and Paul Mackney of the Greece Solidarity Campaign.

The meeting debated the political options for opposing the austerity programme imposed on Greece by the “troika” of the EU, European Central Bank and IMF, and the best way for trade unions and anti-cuts campaigners in the UK to help their Greek brothers and sisters in their struggle.

We agreed to support the demonstration called by the Greece Solidarity Campaign on Sunday 17 June at 2-5pm outside the EU Commission, 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU.

The meeting passed the following statement:

A meeting called on 7th June 2012, by the Barnet Trades Union Council, the Barnet Alliance for Public Services, AKEL[UK], (the Cypriot Progressive Party of Working People) and members of the Greek Cypriot community agreed the following statement:

As representatives of trades unions, as citizens and as members of the community we are concerned about the future of services which belong to the people, about our jobs, our homes, our lives and the lives of future generations.

In our localities and across Europe and the world, the need to secure the most basic elements of civilisation involves us in a struggle against a conspiracy of international finance and business, local and national governments, supra-national institutions like the IMF, the WTO and the EU.

Nowhere is this struggle more intense than in Greece right now. But it is not a Greek problem. It is a problem facing all of us in our everyday lives and it is a crisis in and caused by the global financial and market system, which the world's rulers are trying to make us pay for.

The Greek People have struggled on an unimaginable scale. Their struggle will continue. We pledge our moral and material support to them. If they can find a way of defeating the international bankers and fighting off cuts, extra charges and privatisation then so can we in our localities and so can the people of Europe and the world. A victory in Greece could make victory possible everywhere.

Barnet TUC website and a hot autumn

I am the publicity officer for Barnet trades council (TUC), but the Barnet TUC website hasn't been updated for ages because, basically, I can't get into it anymore!

Perhaps you have experienced this yourself, some IT programme you use is "improved"/"upgraded" or something and thereafter becomes unusable or, at best, not as good as it used to be.

When I have a day spare - ha, ha! - I'll get to the bottom of the problem. In the meantime, I am thinking of setting up a blog that I point the barnettuc.org.uk address at, and in the more immediate meantime, I'll put some of the items I would have put on the Barnet TUC website here on my blog.

So, as well as amusing tales of Barnet life, I'll be posting more purely labour movement-oriented items. Seeing that, this autumn, issues such as pension cuts are going to affect a lot more people than they have in recent years, the blog shouldn't become too unutterably dull and esoteric, I hope!

Alan Homes

We had some sad news last night in the Barnet labour movement about the death of Alan Homes. Alan had suffered a heart attack a few days ago.

Alan was the representative of the NASUWT teaching union in Barnet (and wider) and a member of his union's national executive committee.

Alan was a stalwart member of Barnet trades council and, living in the borough, he was always ready to come out and do stalls and other events in the community. (I must find a lovely picture of him that I have on a stall in New Barnet last April, when we were campaigning against a BNP candidate in the council elections.)

I would describe Alan as the trades council's right wing - which is not to say that he was right-wing at all! When, early on, we had a discussion about how the trades council should relate to the council elections in 2010, whether it should back trade union based anti-cuts candidates, Alan argued that the Labour Party was still, for the unions, the only game in town.

The trades council resolved in that debate to get more political, but we also concluded that the trade union movement locally wasn't in any position to start organising election campaigns on its own account: apart from anything, because we didn't have agreement among ourselves to do it.

Alan was sensible like that. He was also good fun and would dance the night away whenever our events included a musical element!

The NASUWT isn't covering itself in glory in the current campaign to defend public sector pensions; I don't know where Alan stood on that. I would happily claim him as a comrade, however, and on a personal level I will miss him greatly; the Barnet trade unions and anti-cuts groups are going to miss him too.

I would like to send my condolences to Alan's family.

All-London anti-cuts meeting, Saturday 9 April

I'm (perhaps overly) excited about the meeting detailed below, taking place this Saturday.

Several far-left groups have organised launch events for organisations that declared themselves the umbrella for the anti-cuts movement. This on Saturday is actually much more what we need: a getting together of groups rooted in the boroughs. It's belated, but that's because too many people spent too much energy (and money) organising big conferences in expensive venues with top tables groaning with "celebs" that left no time for genuine discussion and organising.

I hope Saturday is not a disappointment! There will be representatives going from the Barnet Alliance for Public Services, and I'm going for Barnet trades council. I'll report back.

And it's open for anyone to attend.

London’s Local Anti-Cuts Alliances
COMMUNITY ACTION AGAINST CUTS
Saturday 9th April 11am-3pm
South Camden Community School
Charrington Street, NW1 1RG

For all those involved in anti-cuts organisations in London, hosted by Camden United Against Cuts
Following the magnificent March 26 show of strength, how can residents and community groups, workers and trades unionists work together to resist the planned cuts, closures and moves to privatisation?
- How can we build an effective mass grass-roots movement to defend public services throughout every corner of London?
- An event for sharing and discussing our experiences and ideas

Agenda

11am: Registration / picking up information / networking

11.30am: Round up of ‘what’s worked / success stories’ from campaigns

12.30pm: Workshops / discussions
a. Involving and building links with Trade Unions and workplaces generally
b. Involving and building links with Community Groups and residents generally
c. Campaigning around local health issues
d. Campaigning around local education issues

1.45 – 3pm Final session
To report back ideas for action in the coming weeks/months from the workshops.

Barnet sixth formers' lively demo

Here's a fuzzy picture of Alexander Clayman, the organiser of this evening's sixth formers' march. He is the one with the megaphone, addressing some of the crowd of about 200 Barnet sixth formers outside the Arts Depot, North Finchley, before they marched to Finchley and Golders Green Conservative HQ to hand in a petition against tuition fee rises. (Thank you to the person who took and shared the pic!)

It was a great demo, a real achievement for a group of young people who only had a small amount of help and advice from a small number of adults. It was a privilege to help steward it.

There was a fair amount of snide comment before the demo from some quarters. These were the insulting suggestions made:

(1) Alex was merely put up to it by the local Labour Party. To which I say: Alex is a member of the LP but all that tells me is that he is interested in politics and he isn't a Conservative, neither of which is a crime. To disparage Alex is to disparage all the angry young people who responded to his initiative!

(2) The young people were going to stage a riot and smash up Finchley and Golders Green Tory party HQ. To which I say: they were never going to do that; the organiser was clear he didn't want any trouble and the young people didn't need to do that to make their political point.

(3) The young people were the dupes of the trades council. To which I say: we were approached to help organise some stewards and we were proud to do that. If we couldn't do that to help our young people, who are being dumped on massively, we wouldn't be worth much.

There is a national day of protest against the tuition fee rises and education cuts next week on Wednesday 24 November. There will be some sort of demonstration in central London; Trafalgar Square is given as a focus at noon. We might be about to see our own student uprising in Britain! Well, you never know... Some more lively protesting on tonight's model would be a good step in that direction.

Find out more about student protest at the website of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.

Middlesex University students protest - more to come on Wednesday

I went in my capacity of Barnet TUC publicity officer to photograph the protest organised by the Middlesex University Students Union (MUSU) this afternoon. They gave out leaflets, made speeches and marched around the university's Hendon campus in order to promote the National Union of Students (NUS) demonstration in central London this coming Wednesday.

I might have been embarrassed to help with this sort of activity in the past, but now I see it in the nature of skills transfer. The students are revolting, but many students unions and the NUS itself have been rather, how shall I put it, supine in the recent period. The effect is that sometimes students need advice in banner-making and so on.

In the case of NUS, the lack of campaigning has been a deliberate strategy - Labour Students tamed and reformed NUS so that it could not cause the government too many headaches. A lot of sad schmucks got a career out of it as well. That was fine (by them) when Labour was the government, it's not so good for them now, and it's been lousy for students all along. Hence, NUS calls its first demonstration in five years.

If you want to join the demonstration in central London on Wednesday, it assembles at 11.30am at Horse Guards Avenue. Middlesex students and staff are leaving Hendon campus at 11am.

My set of pictures from the Middlesex protest is here.

A sparkling protest at Hendon Town Hall

We had a good lobby of Barnet council last night. Reflecting the times we are living in, there was even a police van parked nearby in case things got out of hand and we stormed Hendon Town Hall. I think those days are a little way off. Barnet chief exec Nick Walkley did his usual walkabout to check the size of the crowd - he always tries to do it surreptitiously. He is a queer cove. On this occasion he strode to the police van, to discuss operational tactics with them, I suppose, and then strode back, to cries of "We don't agree with Nick!" from local Labour Party activists.

I will reflect at more length soon on the relationship between anti-cuts campaigners, Barnet trades unions and the Labour Party. It's a complex and, alas, somewhat vexed one. However, it was good to see activists on the lobby last night, the leader of Barnet council Labour group Alison Moore ready to mount the step ladder and shout encouragement through the loud-hailer, and former Hendon MP Andrew Dismore speaking as well.

There were more than a hundred people, I would say, reflecting trade unions and residents. Speakers included a representative of the FBU from Finchley fire station. By agreement, they made off with the Brian Coleman guy at the end of the lobby. I expect he will be appearing on their picket line on Friday-Saturday. We rounded off with a display of sparklers. The next town hall protest is on 14 December, when the council discusses its cuts budget. The theme will probably be seasonal though hardly festive.

You can see some pictures of last night's protest on my Flickr site.

Don't sign the BNP petition!

The crumb of comfort I draw from the fact that the BNP is still running stalls in Barnet is that they do it somewhere different each time, and they avoid being in the same place as the stalls the trades council runs.

To that extent we have them on the run. But one could say, equally, that they are giving us the runaround.

What I have been able to deduce is that the three stalls so far have been staffed mainly by BNP members from Enfield.

Here's my take on it all.

The BNP is collecting signatures on a petition that calls for immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. If you want troops out of Afghanistan and you like the BNP, sign the petition - although you probably won't need to as you are probably in touch with the BNP already.

If you want troops out of Afghanistan and you are interested in finding out more about the BNP, sign the petition - because its primary use is as a recruiting tool and a means to identify potential postal voters for the mayoral and GLA elections. If you don't believe me, I can direct you to the radio interview where Nick Griffin explains this.

If you want troops out of Afghanistan and you don't like the BNP or you don't want your details stored on their database, please don't sign the petition. I think that a lot of people will fall into this category; some of them are signing the petition because, frankly, it's not obvious who the organisation is that is running these stalls.

The banner along the front reads “Support our troops, bring our boys home”. The BNP logo is small, although it is clearer on the sides of their table.

I've met people who thought these stalls are run by Hope For Heroes. I've also met people who, when they realised they were BNP stalls, regretted signing.

The thing that sickens me most about this current BNP campaign is the cynical and patronising attitude they are taking toward black people who sign their petition. This is from a report of a stall they ran recently:

“The one interesting aspect of the day’s outing was the large number of ethnics who agreed completely with the opposition to the war and willingly signed up." ...there was a “high level of awareness” amongst ethnics of the BNP’s new constitutional membership requirements.

That's how the BNP refers to non-white people: "ethnics". I can report now how the BNP regards "ethnics", since I had an extended verbal exchange with one of these BNP goons recently.

Gesturing to a black man standing nearby, who - alas - had just signed the petition, Mr BNP said: "He's got more brains than you and he's from Uganda!"

You see, they just can't help themselves. Even though they are now legally obliged to admit non-white members (you can be sure they wouldn't do it unless they were forced), the BNP is deeply racist. Their entire politics is based on racism.

Barnet trades council has produced a leaflet for the public explaining more about how the BNP intends to use their petition, and more about the BNP's real politics: the ones they won't tell you about on their stall. If you would like a copy or if you want to help us in our campaign to stop the BNP plying their trade on Barnet's streets, please email info@barnettuc.org.uk.

We need to challenge the BNP

If a small group of people set up a stall in your high street one Saturday morning and started collecting signatures on a petition that wanted the government to:

- Deport all those who commit crimes and whose original nationality was not British;
- Review all recent grants of residence or citizenship to ensure they are still appropriate;
- Offer generous grants to those of foreign descent resident here who wish to leave permanently

would you sign it? Not many people would! And the BNP knows that, so they don't have a petition with their "immigration" policy on it.

If the leader of this group was someone who said:

I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth was flat… I have reached the conclusion that the “extermination” tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.

would you give this group the free run of your high street in order to build their organisation? No, and that's one reason that BNP leader Nick Griffin - for that is who said it - has gone quiet recently on his Holocaust denial.

How about if they had a colourful banner which said “Support our troops – Bring our boys home”? Would you take them at face value? If you noticed that this was the BNP out on an opportunist recruiting exercise, would you think: well, they’re only talking about the troops today, so it doesn’t matter?

It would be a mistake to do that. The BNP are hiding their nasty politics behind anti-war rhetoric now, but if they are allowed to grow, they will show their true face.

They were disappointed in the general election, failing to achieve the breakthrough they had hoped for. They have been riven with vicious infighting ever since. But they still have enough confidence to try and break out of their ghetto of deserved unrespectability, and they are running "troops out" stalls in a few places.

They are being audacious; we should not turn a blind eye. We need to challenge the BNP. They are currently exploiting the sympathy for British troops fighting in Afghanistan. Soon they will turn to exploiting the discontent with the cuts in public services. Be sure of it. Yet they have no solutions to our social problems, their only answer being to scapegoat everyone who isn’t exactly like them.

Barnet trades council is drawing up a leaflet to counter the politics of the BNP. We are not prepared to just watch while the BNP tries to build its organisation.

Everyone who hates what they stand for needs to challenge the BNP.

Attempt to smear the trades council is laughable

If you read my blog yesterday you'll have had advanced notice of this feeble attempt to smear the trades council in the Times series.

I'll repeat here the comment I made on the Times website:

Ladies and gentlemen of the Times series, I can't believe that you dignified this "story" with column inches/webspace. A pathetic attempt to smear the trades council over what was at worst a misunderstanding in the organising of a public meeting that was, in the event, a great success.

The timing should have made it completely obvious to you that Coleman was trying to distract from the public meeting last night - 200 plus residents and workers against Barnet council's cuts and privatisation agenda.

I think it was your press night, but you did not send a journalist to cover that - the Barnet Press did. Instead, we get this, frankly, crap. I'm embarassed (once again) to be in the profession.

Vicki Morris
Barnet TUC publicity officer and NUJ member

And here is yesterday's post, getting my rebuttal in early! My prediction was utterly correct.

Don't cut our services! Don't privatise our services! No to Barnet easyCouncil!

Barnet trades council, council unions and residents campaigning on a number of issues made up a lively lobby of Hendon Town Hall tonight, 14 September. The full council was meeting to discuss, among other things, the partial reversal of the senior cabinet members' allowance hike (Allowancegate) and to debate a motion of no confidence in the leader Lynne Hillan.

The lobby attracted around 150 people, in spite of the rain. People were angry at the treatment Connaught workers in the borough have received since the company went bust. They are angry about Allowancegate. They are (still) angry about proposed cuts to sheltered housing wardens. They were demonstrating against Barnet council's so-called easyCouncil plan, to privatise most of the council services, and at the same time to charge residents extra on top of council tax for a "better" level of service - as yet unspecified.

Many residents could not get inside the town hall to hear the meeting. There will be complaints about this. Times series reporters tried to deliver their petition against the allowances rise to the leader, but she refused to meet them - she will only speak to the group editor.

The lobby was addressed by, among others, Keith Nason, Barnet NUT; John Burgesss, Barnet Unison; London FBU; Paul Mackney (Coalition of Resistance); Stan Davison, Barnet 55+ Forum. We leafleted the public and attendees, urging them to come to the launch of the Barnet Alliance 4 Public Services at North London Business Park on Thursday 23 September. (More details: info@barnettuc.org.uk). And released a lot of orange and white "easyCouncil" balloons into the stormy Barnet night.

Barnet unions in the news

Austin Harney, the secretary of Barnet trades council, a colleague of mine, is featured in the Times series, commenting on the council leader and cabinet members' allowances hike. Austin says:

The Conservative Party should not hesitate to discipline their members on the cabinet of Barnet Council, and even threaten them with expulsion from the party if these Councillors do not forfeit their latest increases.

The truth is that these Conservative councillors know that they can impose any policy to their whim and still become elected for every term of office.

Yet, the fact remains that if they stood as independents tomorrow, they would easily lose.

Austin calls on

all people working and living in the London Borough of Barnet to petition their three Conservative MPs, and demand that these councillors withdraw their preposterous increases or face expulsion from the Tory Party.

Meanwhile, the GMB union has calculated that "more than £9m in taxes went uncollected by Barnet Council last year":

The council, which needs to save more than £6m after budget cuts this year, failed to gather £9.873m in council tax and business rates in the 2009/10 financial year.

This makes it the fifth worst offender in London after Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Croydon and Southwark.

Challenging times for the left and the unions

I'm racing to finish a piece of work and haven't time to say much about anything right now - and the world keeps on turning?! I'm posting here the comment I made to an article in the Times series. In it Lynne Hillan says that she would review the relationship of her Tory group with the local Lib Dem Group, in the light of the coalition at the top of their two parties.

Barnet Tories and Lib Dems work more closely together. Hollow laughter all round, I would think. Joking apart, it does raise interesting questions.

On a question like sheltered housing warden cuts, Labour nationally didn't have a line but said it was up to local councils to do what they liked on this, and they made it possible for the cuts to be made.

Locally, some Lib Dem and Tory councils have gone for axing the wardens - and some haven't. It seems to be up to local party groups what stance they take. So in Barnet Lib Dem group was against warden cuts.

I don't know about the inner workings of the Lib Dems - how much autonomy do local groups have? Will they be forced to work closer with Tory groups on councils? (Shudder!)

I agree that Lib Dems are to the left of Labour on some (too many!) policies, and they have forced some good concessions from the Tories in this coalition deal. But my basic take on this is that all 3 parties (their leaderships, at least) were promising massive public sector cuts, whereas I don't believe that public services should be forced to pay for a crisis we did not create.

And Lib Dems have talked about banning public sector strikes, which is something the Tories would like to do as well. Let's see whether that is something this strengthened centre-right brings forward quickly? Challenging times to say the least, for the left and the trade unions. Gulp!

Vicki from Barnet trades council

Show me a filthy pavement and I'll show you an easyCouncil

Professor Tony Travers, director of the London School of Economics' London group, on Barnet Tories' easyCouncil idea:

"It is difficult to see where this model can be run in any great detail.

"They give the example that people who want to make a planning application can pay to have it done more quickly.

"But if you try to apply that model to other council services it gets you into difficulties.

"How can you say you will sweep more carefully outside someone's house if they pay extra?"

Vicki Morris, Publicity Officer for Barnet trades council, comments:

"Who said anything about sweeping?! The logic of the easyCouncil idea is that you could end up with vast swathes of the borough never being swept at all."

More on the BBC news website here.

They publish lots of election leaflets.com

I've chanced on a great website called the Straight Choice.

They are enabling members of the public and political parties to scan and post all the election leaflets they can find. (I know the Barnet Bugle blog is doing this for Barnet, but this is on a bigger scale showing you stuff from around the country, plus you can search by tags/"which party is being attacked", etc).

The Barnet trades council leaflet that we gave out yesterday in East Barnet ward is on there already - this website is an easy way for me to show it to you! We weren't only trying to be negative (against the BNP) but to suggest to people a positive way to react to political and social worries. As it says on the leaflet: "Fight for public services, good jobs, and decent homes for everyone".

I hope more and more people will be doing that. Frankly, we don't have a better choice!

Dishing out leaflets in New Barnet - but in East Barnet ward!

FBU president Mick Shaw usurps Brian Coleman

I'm going to Scotland tomorrow for a couple of days. I only have time to write a brief report of the Barnet trades council AGM held last Thursday night. Suffice it to say that, incredibly, our agenda was so full we didn't even get around to talking about easyCouncil!

Yes, the challenges are coming thick and fast. The growth of the far-right, what attitude we should take in the elections, tabloid press vilification of trade unions, proposed abolition of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme...

Still, we found time to smile, as the photo at the top, of our guest speaker Mick Shaw, president of the Fire Brigades Union, sitting in the chair usually occupied by Barnet mayor Brian Coleman, shows. We had booked to have our meeting in one of the committee rooms at Hendon Town Hall, but it was needed for another event, so we were fobbed off with the council chamber.

The photos below are, first, of local civil servants talking about their dispute, and, second, the tasty chairs that the councillors sit in when they are in the chamber. Naturally, this being Barnet council, the rest of the time, the chairs just go to waste.

A week of action for Barnet trades council

An astonishing range of activities this week (commencing Saturday). Barnet trades council's diary is pasted below to give a sense of what we have done already and will be doing for the rest of this week. Please join us if you can!

20-22 March. BA cabin crew strikes. Picket line visits.

Saturday 20 March. Demonstration against the far-right English Defence League in Bolton.

Saturday 20 March. Demonstration against college cuts organised by the lecturers' union UCU. (Picture below courtesy of Barnet Unison.)

Monday 22 March. Demonstration to support sheltered housing wardens, central London, assemble: noon, Parliament Square; at 1pm we will deliver letters to the main party leaders. Barnet residents of sheltered housing schemes are central to organising this event.

Tuesday 23 March. Staff and public meeting against planned cuts at Barnet College. 5.30pm, Building 3, North London Business Park. More information: 020 8200 8300. This meeting has been cancelled, alas.

Wednesday 24 March. Budget day strike by civil servants in the PCS union, as part of their campaign to defend their redundancy scheme. Information about picket lines and strike support will be posted on the Barnet TUC website.

Thursday 25 March. Barnet TUC AGM, 7-9pm, Council Chamber, Hendon Town Hall, the Burroughs, London NW4 4BG. All welcome, including trade unionists and local campigning groups.

27-30 March. BA cabin crew strikes. Picket line visits.

Brent Cross and green bans

It's going to be another interesting week in Barnet politics. On Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 November there is a special, extended planning and environment committee to look at Barnet council's regeneration plans for the Brent Cross area.

This deeply unlovely part of the borough certainly needs attention, but Barnet's plans are looking less and less designed to improve life for people in the area and more and more like a cash-cow for the council, with the focus on expanding retail. Barnet council needs money, but is this a good way to make it? Neighbouring boroughs Brent and Camden have had their noses put out of joint, as Barnet's plans will impact on their own residents, but they have little say in what Barnet does.

You can see the plans on the council's website here.

A formidable coalition is forming against the plans and in favour of a call-in by the Secretary of State for the Environment. Visit the Brent Cross coalition website here. Barnet trades council has joined the Coalition, which might seem at odds with our concern for job creation, but we are for sustainable job creation, and it would not be the first time that labour movement bodies have campaigned for the environment.

An episode in labour and environmental history that deserves to be better known is the green bans imposed by the Builders Labourers Federation in New South Wales, Australia.

This group of badly paid and downtrodden workers built a union in the post-war period on democratic participation by members and taking up bread and butter issues in their industry, particularly health and safety. As one contributor describes it, in an inspring film made about the union, "Rocking the Foundations", they set out to 'civilise their industry'.

When they had built up their own strength, they used it to support environmental campaigners objecting to particular construction projects in and around Sydney throughout the 1960s and early 70s. They imposed 'green bans' where, to take one example, construction workers in the union refused to work on a plan to build on Kelly's Bush, the last remaining undeveloped bushland in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. They protected low-cost working-class housing schemes around the Rocks area of Sydney against demolition to make way for office blocks. And they stopped the Royal Botanic Gardens being turned into a carpark for Sydney Opera House.

Yes, that's right, they stopped construction projects that would have made jobs for construction workers, in order to protect the environment.

As one contributor says in the film, what's the point in earning a decent wage if you then have nowhere decent to live and nowhere to spend your leisure time? For very many reasons, we are a long way off being able to appeal to construction unions to slap a green ban on the current Brent Cross scheme! But the green bans episode is an impressive example of what can be done when workers are mobilised around environmental issues.

Manifesto for the public services - 1st draft

It won't have escaped your notice that we nearly had a completely financial meltdown last year, and are currently in a recession. Moreover, despite the fact that they weren't the cause of this, you'll have got the message from almost all political parties that it is the public services that will get hammered in order to restore the national finances.

Barnet council trade unions, Barnet trades council, and a number of residents have launched a draft manifesto for the public services to serve two purposes in the coming period:

- as a benchmark against which we will judge the policies of politicians seeking our votes

- as a set of principles to guide our own actions.

If I were to summarise its contents at the moment it's: we will defend public services!

I must stress that it is a draft, an imperfect document (though a darn sight better than anything any of the mainstream political parties is offering). We are inviting residents' and other organisations in Barnet to join the process of discussing the manifesto, the issues raised in it, and proposing amendments. The manifesto will be finalised, taking on board people's suggestions, in the spring at which point people can decide whether they want to put their names to it or not.

If you would like more information about this I suggest you email Barnet trades council - manifesto@barnettuc.org.uk - as they will be playing a coordinating role. Thank you. I think this is a pretty exciting development, albeit the road we are embarking on looks long.

Is it a bird, is it a plane? The Future Shape report arrives

You can download the Future Shape report and other documents to be discussed at Barnet Council's cabinet meeting on 21st October from here.

I haven't read them yet but I can see they're packed with colourful diagrams - always a bad sign!

Other items on the agenda will be the Brent Cross regeneration scheme and the council's response to the recession, so a very lively evening is in store.

Council unions, Barnet trades council, and residents opposed to the Future Shape privatisation plan will be lobbying outside Hendon Town Hall, the Burroughs, from 6pm. The Cabinet meeting starts at 7pm and several questions are tabled from the public about Future Shape and other matters. Come and join us!