An afternoon at Westminster

After shooting across London from PDCC at Mabledon Place it was time for Labour Link Committee, which met in Parliament as the guests of the conveners of the UNISON Group of MPs.

It was our first meeting since the regional reps elections so it was election time for our Chair and Vice Chair. Steve Warwick was re-elected as Chair. For Vice Chair I was proud to nominate Rachel Voller from the Greater London Region, who was elected. Rachel is a strong activist in UNISON and the Labour Party and I'm sure she will do a wonderful job for us.

We heard from Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party as well as being Party Chair, Leader of the House and Secretary of State for Equality. She spoke about the importance of working together on our common agenda, with an emphasis on equalities and set out her vision for the next manifesto to have a focus on equality. She spoke of the importance of attracting more women into the party, and as the union with the largest number of women members the role for us in that. Harriet only had time to answer one question before having to litterally dash into the Commons for some important business but committed to meeting with the committee in future.

Dawn Butler, Vice Chair of the Party with responsibility for youth, also came to speak to us. She spoke about the launch of the £1 youth membership rate which will be launched at an event I will be at in December. She also spoke of some plans for a mass consultation of young people next year, aiming to consult 60,000 young people. We expressed our desire to support this and encourage our young members to get involved.

We also had extensive discussions about our work against the BNP and how we take that forward. We discussed the important role of getting the Labour vote out in order to defeat the BNP.

There was also a discussion about the importance of our activity in supporting Labour locally and improving our influence within the local party, a topic we will be returning to.