Published: 19 January, 2012
by JOHN GULLIVER

THEY all seemed young, eager and listening hard as George Binette, head of the Town Hall union branch of Unison, talked about how they should organise themselves – for one more push.

It will be a long push.

But, I thought, they were all young and still full of hope.

They were regrouping after their negotiators in the national dispute over pensions appeared to have given way to government pressure days before Christmas.

Can they make their union chiefs see it the way they do?

Binette explained that a special conference on the dispute would have to be held if a quarter of the membership voted for it.

Hence, the meeting at Friends Meeting House on Saturday which I had wandered into.

Apparently, Lambeth staff have voted Yes for a conference.

Will Camden do the same?

What’s strange about the dispute is that ordinary union members know so little about who exactly their negotiators met, when, and what role did their national chief, Dave Prentis, play in what they fear is a “sellout”.

This is a bit of a cliché but the words “sellout” are now taking wing among these young members.

The word democracy has different meanings to different people.

It seems members had the right to vote for their union’s policy on pensions, but that is as far as they were allowed to go.

Once, they had shown they were against higher contributions to their pension pot and retirement in their late sixties, their “higher” officials took over.

Once, a dispute of this magnitude affecting millions of public sector staff, would have been picked over by industrial reporters on national dailies. That is a thing of the past. The public are being kept in the dark.

The government – and union officials – may like it that way, but a growing number of ordinary union members don’t.

I witnessed that on Saturday afternoon.