By Pat Sikorski and Phil McGarry

As part of the STUCs Trade Union week held in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday, 8 October the RMT sponsored a 2-hour drop in session to encourage members of the Scottish Parliament to come to the meeting room and to sign up for the People’s Charter.

The RMT had three lay representatives in Jim Gray, Regional Council Secretary, Stuart Elder, Regional Council President, and Mark Nothard, Guards Company Council in attendance  along with AGS Pat Sikorski and Regional Organisers Phil McGarry and Ian McIntyre.   We were assisted by Lynn Henderson, Political Officer of the PCS and Ann Henderson, Asst. Secretary of the STUC, along with Elaine Smith MSP and her Research Advisers.

We were successful in obtaining MSPs signatures and this was followed up by public meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow that were held on Saturday, 10 October and Sunday, 11 October respectively.

The speakers for the Edinburgh meeting, which was chaired  by Lynn Henderson, Political Officer, PCS Scotland, were Angela Constance SNP MSP for Livingston, Labour Councillor Gordon Munro and Pat Sikorski AGS, RMT. The meeting heard that the Council was embarking on swingeing  cuts to  public sector housing and that the cross sectoral counter arguments were all laid out in the Charter. It was also reported to the meeting that over 5,000 women were marching in the city to commemorate the centenary of a massive Suffragette demonstration. The message had to be that the Charter must become a central part of all such demos and industrial struggles in the future, especially the upcoming national strike in the Post Office.

On Sunday 11 October some 50 delegates attended the Glasgow Morning Star Conference followed by the Charter meeting. The principal speakers were Bro Pat Sikorski along with Elaine Smith MSP (Labour) with Jamie Hepburn MSP (SNP).   Mike Kirby, UNISON Convenor Scotland chaired the meeting.

To date we have the support of nine MSPs.  

Elaine Smith (Labour) representing Coatbridge & Chryston who is also the RMT Scottish Parliamentary Convener
Bill Butler (Labour) representing Glasgow Anniesland
Marlyn Glenn (Labour) representing North East Scotland
Cathy Peattie (Labour) representing Falkirk
Frank McAveety (Labour) representing Glasgow Shettleston
Angela Constance (SNP) who represents Livingston
Jamie Hepburn (SNP) who represents Central Scotland
Bill Wilson (SNP) who represents the West of Scotland
John Wilson (SNP) who represents Central Scotland

On Thursday, 15 October the Trade Union Group of the SNP have organised a Fringe Meeting. On the platform will be Alex Salmond, the SNP First Minister along with Matt Wrack, FBU General Secretary, Jeremy Dear NUJ General Secretary, Pat Sikorski RMT and the Deputy General Secretary of the STUC, Dave Moxham who is standing in for the General Secretary Grahame Smith. It is expected that the Charter will be as central to the debate there as it was to most of the fringe meetings at the Liverpool TUC.

The next meeting of the Scottish Steering Committee of the People’s Charter will lay plans for a hustings of all the candidates in the Glasgow North East By-election together with extensive canvassing for the Charter on the streets. The six trade unions currently backing the Charter in Scotland are the FBU, RMT, UNISON (Scotland), PCS, NUJ and the UCU.  Now that the TUC has supported the Charter it is very much hoped that many other affiliates will join the group.   We will be sending model letters to assist people to ask their Westminster MP and their Scottish MSP to sign up to the Charter and to encourage people to write various articles on the Charter’s necessity.

We need to take the People’s Charter deep into the communities to involve Tenants Organisations, Residents Associations, Community Councils, Pensioners Forum and the Shop Stewards Movement and ordinary trade union members. The impetus for building a mass Charter movement of resistance to the banker’s recession and for real change for the better for ordinary people must come from below.