On Saturday 4 February, Stand Up To Racism planned a national Trade Union Conference to organise rooting the anti-racist movement inside our unions and workplaces. The conference was supported by the TUC, backed by whole host of national unions, and took place at the NUT HQ.
Over 250 trade unionists came along, with plenaries where health workers, council workers, postal workers, lecturers, teachers all brought their experience from their unions and sectors with ideas of how to stand together against racism in our unions and workplaces. Many black activists from different unions shared their experience of the impact of the concerted attempt by politicians and the media to whip up racist division, and the conference was alive with a spirit of solidarity.
Workshops saw lively and productive discussions on how to take on the argument to defend free movement of labour, to oppose the prevent agenda and develop a vision of anti-racist education, and another provided a space to discuss building solidarity with refugees, with reports and experiences from those who had been to Calais on delegations.
The main and most urgent objective coming out of the conference was organising across unions and workplaces to ensure the biggest turnout possible of trade union banners and delegations onto the 18 March national Stand Up To Racism demonstration. There was a real sense of the potential to go beyond the usual suspects, and that felt very palpable as the backdrop was a week of mass mobilisations against Trump.
