Bye Bye Brighton

I love Brighton just a bit more each time I’m here, a city with vibe, verve and verisimilitude (I just like the word).

I love its burnt out pier with its twisted, haunted beauty jarring against the shimmering sea.

I love lying on the surprisingly comfortable pebbly beach, listening to the cool hubbub from the very many underarch beach bars.

I love the twisting Lanes with their quintessentially quirky and damn expensive boutiques.

Most of all i love Brighton because I’m at Unisons national delegate conference. Sadly this may be our last visit to Brighton until the Conference centre sorts out its seating arrangements, which for some delegates amounts to 4 days of cruel and unusual punishment.

I for one will miss it, even if my sore bum doesn’t

 

Planet conference is a time and place like no other. A time and a place that is truly egalitarian. Where else can a rank and file everyday worker, who in daily life goes about relatively unnoticed, hold 3,000 people enthralled for those 3 minutes of a speech. 3 minutes that can change opinions about face, and influence a million members and more, just with the power of an experience shared.  Politicians would give up an inflated expense claim for that sort of exposure.

Unison’s Conference is writ through with unwritten tradition.

The gauntlet of leafleters, campaigners and paper sellers that greet you on the first morning, whom I swear would be there however early you arrived.

The hush as we stand heads bowed, reflecting on comrades lost during the previous year.

The warmth of applause given to each declared “first time speaker”

The mostly good natured and healthy bantering towards our elected leadership.

The baiting of the Standing Orders Committee and the unflappable humour of it’s chair, Cletus’s responses.

The fake joke emergency motions submitted on the last day.

The final day song by Cletus which this year was a version of Mercy by Duffy delivered in a singing style that defies definition and makes Jeremy Hardy sound beautiful (see I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue).

Most of all what I love about conference is the feeling of belonging. Belonging to the greatest trade union in the nation. I have so many friends now, that I may see for just 1 week each year, a number that grows each time. This time in particular my fab Twitter friend @debaucherydean or Laurel. (More about my Twittery week later)

Sometimes, listening to the passionate debates you would think that we are a union split asunder, but I know that behind our differences there is so much more that binds us. I know that when the crunch comes we are there for each other. Successive governments since the eighties have sought to limit us, to hamper us, and to break us, but we remain.

We are here, We are growing and We will prevail ….. We are Unison

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