Justice for Columbia

Had a very eye-opening and enjoyable afternoon yesterday. What started as a networking exercise ended up active participation in an enlightening political meeting, and a session in the pub with my potential future employers. Let me explain.

I've been applying like mad for training contracts and vac schemes recently, trying to get my foot in the door with any firm who will have me. One of these is Thompson's, the UK's official lawyers for the trade union movement. Anyone who knows me will know I'm no socialist, but having seen their excellent presentation at BPP in November, I decided I had to give them a go, which I have (sent off for them last week).

All of which brought me to the regional offices of Unison yesterday afternoon. The two solicitors I had met before were giving a presentation on behalf of Justice for Columbia, a pressure group which was having its inaugral meeting in the North West, its launch in effect. They'd spoken about it a bit at BPP, and I think it put a lot of students off, to be honest (seeing as I'm the only person I know from the school who's applied, that could well be the case!)

However, I was prepared to sit through it again if it gave me a chance to network and make a good impression on them. What I wasn't prepared for was such a great insight into the nature of the work the firm does, and who it represents.

I arrived at the meeting and got chatting to this big bloke wearing a Palestinian shawl. Those things put me off immediately, but I saw past it when he said that he'd recently been to the region, had done the whole tour of duty if you will, spent time with union officials over there, been tear-gassed by the Israeli army, all that. I had a lot of respect for that. What then really grabbed my attention was when he went on to talk about the movement he was organising/part of to stop Nick Griffin and the BNP from gaining a foothold in the next set of elections.

(FYI: The European Parliamentary elections are coming up in May, and the BNP are currently polling 8% in the North West, where Griffin is on the list. This means that he, being top of the list, will gain entry to Brussels, align with the far-righters already in there, and push their agenda of hate and intolerance to the detriment of all Europe. This issue is very close to my heart, Griffin is the scourge of this country's politics, you only have to look at his party's website to know this. I'll probs be disappearing part way thru April and May knocking on doors across the region to try and stop them.)

Anyway, it turns out that this incredibly sound guy is the regional boss for the Fire Brigades' Union (his office is in Ellesmere Port in a lighthouse!) I sat next to him during the meeting, which was dedicated entirely to generating support for J for C from Unison. It was chaired by the regional head of Unison, who freaked me out ever so slightly by opening the meeting with "Good afternoon comrades...". I immediately felt like an imposter! However, I settled down once things got going, and the two solicitors gave their powerful presentation.

Justice for Columbia really is the most worthwhile, cogent political pressure group I have ever come across. The reasons the solicitors were involved was because scores of progressive lawyers are being killed there every year simply for speaking out against the regime and defending the families of the 'disappeared'. Unison were becoming interested because many trade union leaders were experiencing the same. There were also a couple of guys my age who were the token left-wing studenty types, but they also said their piece with great insight and dignity, none of the firebrand shouting that Manchester Students' Union adopts. As the presentation ended, I felt thoroughly convinced that this was a just cause.

What really struck me, and I asked a question to this effect, was how little the Columbians I worked with in America seemed to care about any of this. They are living, to all intents and purposes, in a police state, where the military regime in charge views the written constitution as 'mere poetry' , political dissidents are locked up and there are 4 million dispossessed peoples, the second highest number in the world after Sudan. But no mention was made of this to me by any of them (to be fair, I never asked), and the only real indicaiton of any views they had that I picked up on was that they were anti-FARC. One of the speakers, Mairella, made a good point that this was probably a cultural thing, that my friends were probably from a more priveliged background which was doing well out of the regime or at least tolerated it, and didn't want the Marxis 'guerrillas' coming along and spoiling everything. I could sort of understand that, from a practical if not from a moral standpoint.

Anyway, other members asked some good questions about, amongst other things, the point of this campaign, which they felt was something of a PR exercise, and to what extent the movement could emulate its efforts in South Africa in the 80s by getting involved with this. My new friend also forced the Nick Griffin issue. All in all, good stuff, Unison North West is on board, and clandestine moves will continue to be made to suspend British military aid to Columbia.

The meeting lasted a good two hours, after which it was time to mingle. Got chatting with the solicitors a bit about my application and the firm, talked a bit more about Nick Griffin, and spoke with some teachers about the evils of City Academies, left thoroughly convinced they are a very bad thing!

It was then time to repair to the pub, where I was bought drinks all afternoon! One of the lawyers had to dash off to the office, but the other one and the Fire Brigades' guy sat with me in the Wellington Arms just off the Triangle all afternoon buying me Timothy Taylor! Class! All of which fuelled discussion of politics, trade union law issues (specifically employment - very hot topic with all the layoffs going on all over the place) and our repsective life stories. I'd always been fed the line by my parents that the unions were a pestilence on this country in the 70s (which FBU admitted) and that is still, when you think about it, the line that continues to be fed to us by the media. But when I got home that night, bit 'refreshed' and cooking my dinner, I felt that these were thoroughly decent men and women, standing up for what they believed in. It will be a pleasure to work for them (if I get in!)

Hasta luego!