V Festival success

Well I'm now clean and rested after a muddy and tiring weekend at V Festival in Staffordshire.

UNISON West Midlands Regional Young Members Forum has traditionally attended a summer event to promote the union to young people (having had stalls at Artsfest in Birmingham and the Shropshire Youth Games). This year we decided to go to V Festival. It was our first year there (though Eastern Region have been at the Chelmsford site for some years) so a lot of lessons were learnt, like we had to set up on Wednesday and wear good wellies!

The low point was being stuck in a traffic jam on the way up on Friday afternoon for eight hours! At one point on the motorway it took us two hours to travel one mile, with the light relief of witnessing people dancing and doing handstands in the middle of the motorway!

Our stall was really successful, our petition supporting UNISON's 6 Positive Futures for the NHS

1. Revive the NHS
2. Review value for money
3. Cooperate not compete
4. Empower NHS Staff
5. Involve the public
6. Celebrate achievement – The NHS is 60 years old in 2008

received around 700 signatures over two days and people there were really positive about defending the NHS and other public services.

We had plenty of freebies to tempt people to the stall, most popular were the UNISON/Positively Public glowsticks, we even had ques for the stall at some points.

We had literature about a number of the unions campaigns and the importance of trade unions, and we managed to recruit a few new members on the day and gave out lots of membership forms to public service workers who visited the stall.

And of course there was time for seeing bands. The Kooks were brilliant, I've been wanting to see them for ages, The Killers were great, Snow Patrol were brilliant and it made my festival when Martha Wainwright came on for a duet. Beverley Night was great as well, with Ocean Colour Scene being the top for atmosphere and singing along both in the JJB tent opposite our stall.

Labour Link Forum

I've just got back home after UNISON's Labour Link Forum, where I was a delegate on behalf of the National Young Members Forum.

We were supposed start off with Hilary Benn as our Key note speaker, but unfortunately as the new Environment Secretary (and Sheffield MP) he was busy dealing with the devastating floods across Yorkshire. We had the last minute replacement of Hazel Blears, who is now in a key position for UNISON as Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities.

Hazel also has ties with UNISON having been a branch secretary and chair in NALGO, one of our founding unions. She said some good things about listening to staff and always comes across as a decent politician when you see her in person (though we obviously have some significant political differences). On equal pay she was clearly overwhelmed by the underfunding of single status for local government, I hope that she will be able to tackle this issue which is so vital for our local government members.

I moved a motion which the National Young Members Forum had submitted on Young People and Labour. The motion sets out UNISON's support for reforming Young Labour and the key principles that this reform should take; UNISON's continued support for Young Labour and Labour Students (with the possibility of funding a full time Youth Officer for the Labour Party); and a commitment for Labour Link to work with UNISON's Young Members Forums to engage more of our young members in Labour Link and the Labour Party. I am glad to say that this passed unanimously and I look forward to working with Labour Link and young APF levy payers on delivering this policy.

It was a good event, with a relaxed atmosphere which meant it was easy to get to know other delegates. It was disappointing that there were not many young members there, with just our current NYMF chair Anne True the only young member there as a voting delegate. Hopefully the work on engaging young members in Labour Link will mean that this improves in future years.