Lambeth Unison, the diaries

The Lambeth Unison diaries, a real time account of events from 1988...

I realised by the start of 1990 that if I wanted to achieve change and help those around me I had to walk the talk and agreed, as I mentioned before, to accept a nomination for the position of Convenor for DMS so not only did I not stick to my promise to concentrate on my career and keep a low profile for a while but I moved on to take on more responsibility. This is of course a major trait in my personality the inability, in other words, to remain neutral and not get involved when I think something is wrong. So I became Convenor for DMS at the age of 29 and was thrown at the deep end but with a lot of support from members of my own shop and activists from the BWG.

I was beginning to notice of course at the time that the branch was more or less divided into 3 'camps' if I can call them that. The hard core left wing who wanted continuous 'movement', those who were supporting the existing NALGO officer core and those of us on the Self Organised Group side. I found tremendous support from the BWG within the branch but I also thought that the Branch Secretary at the time, Mike Waller, who had been there for many years was doing the best he could do. He was also helped by Tony Jules who was from the BWG and was the first Black Assistant Branch Secretary, the BWG Convenor, Ralph Rahim was also quite influential. And as I mentioned elsewhere in the diaries I found the continuous arguments at Convenors committee which were held every Wednesday at Heatherington Road to be disturbing. There was a lot of in fighting. This does not mean that the majority of us in the branch were not doing good work supporting members, but I could see that we could do better if we were more united, this of course never changed...