Community campaigning

The primary threat in 2015  UKIP  Politics of division

What is wrong with UKIP?  Poisoning the national discourse  Dividing communities  At a time when the far right (potentially more violent than ever) and the ‘jihadis’ want to exploit and recruit from community tensions

Real issues are lost  Housing  NHS  Education  Jobs/Low wage economy  Poverty in our communities  Environment  Deficit

Short term objective Keep UKIP out of office and thereby reduce their political power by: Challenging their ‘soft support’ and Turning out the anti-UKIP vote

Long term objectives?  Building strong, inclusive communities that are resilient to the politics of division  Establish deep and meaningful alliances across traditional barriers

Building a local Progressive alliance Students Young people Trade unionists Faith com- munities LGBT community Tennants groups environmen talists

Key campaign elements  Voter registration  1 million lost from the register  Disproportionately young  Least likely to vote UKIP

Campus call-out

Souls to the Polls

Transport Tuesday

Community and trade union organising  It is not new  Role of trades councils  Traditional relationship between trade unions and the Labour party

The moral authority that London Citizens has given to the London living wage has been extraordinary’... ‘this should not be underestimated …we would not have been able to do what we have done without this leadership…the moral authority of London Citizens has been devastating in its impact.’ Jack Dromey, former Unite Deputy General Secretary’

Practical steps  Know what you are organising for  Choose your partners strategically  Hackney Unison and Disability rights network  Undertake power mapping  Hackney Gazette and BNP advert

Practical steps  Build relationships to last  Think outside ‘trade union culture’.  ‘Put in’ at least as much as you ‘take out’  Have some fun

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Use your members We don’t look at our members outside the workplace. Time and again I have encountered people through London Citizens who are there through their church or through their mosque or through some other organisation, and then they turn out to be a union member.

Summary  Community organising takes time  It involves building reciprocal relationships of trust  It is about understanding power and leverage  It provides opportunities to mobilise communities and people

So much of the debate around union organizing strategy never leaves the realm of jargon and abstraction, it’s important to spell out what organizing the ‘whole worker’ means. Life was changing for these people. They were constituting themselves as a class. They were bargaining with their bosses, not begging. And they were winning everywhere. They were fundamentally building workers power, and it was an experience of class, race, faith, and personal liberation.