HOPE Not Hate West Midlands day school report

HOPE not hate / Searchlight by Matthew Collins | Monday, 9 February 2009

The weekend's Hope Not Hate West Midlands day school was a great success, with over eighty delegates battling snowy conditions in the region to attend.

The day kicked off with Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas addressing the delegates over the concerns that many people have over the economy and how these concerns may fuel or give rise to the far-right. In particular, Cruddas addressed the recent oil refineries "British Jobs for British Workers" strikes, brilliantly articulating the Labour and Trade Union movement's response. Delegates were heartened to hear that despite the complexity of the issues there were numerous anecdotes as to how many times the BNP had been turned away from the picket lines by trade unionists.

Searchlight Editor Nick Lowles then gave a briefing on the forthcoming Euro Election campaign, confirming that the Daily Mirror newspaper will be again supporting the Hope Not Hate campaign and also introduced to delegates the workings of the tie-in with Blue State Digital, the American Internet campaigners who helped drive the vote for US President Barack Obama's campaign. Nick also reiterated how important in this campaign the trade unions will be by emphasising how imbedded trade unions and their members really are in communities.

Liz McElroy and from the American trade union umbrella organisation AFL-CIO and Lindsay Patterson from the American Steel Workers Union, then gave a dynamic joint presentation on organising for victory American style. Delegates were glued to their seats while Liz and Lindsay injected good old-fashioned American optimism and a "can-do" attitude into their presentation, leaning heavily on their recent experience of organising the American Labor movement behind Barak Obama and how to take that organising success forward and into the future will tools and language that works as well as highlighting the language and methods that do not work.

No reporting on a Searchlight/Hope Not Hate day school is complete without mentioning the lunch. For the second day school running delegates did not get a curry, which could be evidence enough to suggest that Nick Lowles and Matthew Collins are no longer responsible for Hope Not Hate's catering, though Nick does confirm on his blog that there had been a visit to a curry house in West Bromwich the night before for a lucky few.

The afternoon sessions around community organising, the internet and mobilising young people all ran over time, partly due to the enthusiasm people wanted to inject into those sessions themselves on the back of the talk from our American guests, and partly too, to keep Matthew's end of conference summary to a minimum.

In summarising, Matthew spoke of the obligation on delegates to begin organising meetings and setting up Hate Not Hate groups across the Midlands as well as trade unions in the region preparing for May 15th-Union Friday. Matthew reported that already there is a healthy inter-union competition between the east and west Midlands to turn out the most members for action.