UNISON presents Dr Neville Lawrence with honorary membership

Today UNISON presented Dr Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen Lawrence (pictured), with honorary union membership for life. 

Presenting the membership at UNISON’s 2023 national delegate conference in Liverpool, UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea described how the union has had ‘a long history’ of working with Stephen Lawrence’s parents, Dr Neville Lawrence and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, who have both received honorary union memberships.

Mr Lawrence recounted to delegates how the trade union movement was fundamental to his family’s battle for justice over the murder of their son, Stephen Lawrence. 

“Black members came to my house one morning and said ‘we will help you, we need you to get involved in the union.’

“I remember when I had just come to the country and in order to get to work in those days, if you didn’t have a union card, you could not get through those gates. And there I was again, going to the unions to ask them to help me to get the people who had murdered my son convicted.

“I went to a conference in Blackpool, and we took leaflets. A man had told me: ‘If you come to the conference, there will be members of different unions inside the conference, and they will take your request all over England’.

“I am standing here 30 years later because of you, and all the other different unions who have been with us over the past 30 years.”

Mr Lawrence explained that he ‘did not realise what racism was until I came to this country’.

“I knew there were differences between races, but I didn’t know that hatred could be so bad that you would see an innocent person standing at a bus stop, waiting to go home, and then decide to kill him.

“My life has been turned upside down, and I am saying to you: without the help of all the different unions who have been by my family’s side, maybe I wouldn’t be standing here.

“Thank you very much for being with us. I hope that you continue to support my family.”

Mr Lawrence’s address was met with a standing ovation from conference delegates.

The article UNISON presents Dr Neville Lawrence with honorary membership first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: Honouring Stephen, Doreen and Neville Lawrence

On Saturday 22 April, we will mark the 30th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. Each anniversary marks a year of life denied to Stephen, who was only 18 when he died.

Our hearts go out to his parents, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Neville Lawrence for whom this day, thirty years ago, was the start of their courageous battle for justice. They took on not only Stephen’s murderers, but the police force that failed Stephen at every turn.

UNISON was proud to stand with Stephen’s parents from the very start, offering whatever support we could. Our commitment remains to this day.

This year, UNISON will be giving Doreen and Neville Lawrence honorary life membership as a mark of respect for their enormous contributions to fight racism across UK society. The honour will be ours.

By challenging the racism that led to Stephen’s death, Doreen and Neville Lawrence challenged an entire society to change and transform itself. We have all benefited from their work. But we still see, across the world, that the lives of Black people are not valued.

UNISON pays tribute to the work of the Lawrence family through our commitment to fighting racism in workplaces and institutional barriers in the workplace, in society and in the trade union movement. In doing so, I am well aware that this fight is not over.

Only a few years ago the government announced that ‘institutional racism’ didn’t exist, only for us all to witness the stark reality of racism laid bare in the pandemic.

We saw its impact on Black workers on the pandemic frontline and we saw its effect on communities already ravaged by deprivation and inequality. And now, the public and politicians are becoming more aware of how much work still remains to be done to tackle institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia in our police forces.

In Stephen’s terrible death, and the justice and help denied to him, we saw the deadliest form that racism can take. But racism can worsen lives by a thousand small cuts, impoverishing lives and life chances.

As UNISON general secretary, I will always ensure that tackling racism in all its forms remains at the core of our work.

The article Blog: Honouring Stephen, Doreen and Neville Lawrence first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: Remembering the ‘banality of evil’ is of vital importance

By Joshua Garfield and Izzy Lenga

Hannah Arendt wrote about the “banality of evil,” as a countenance to the often ubiquitous belief that evil is exceptional; that uniquely evil deeds are committed by uniquely evil individuals.

Offering up a thesis that evil is banal begs the question of whether we need to work harder to fight hate, because it is far more common than we are willing to admit.

The theme for this year’s international Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls on 27 January, is Ordinary People.

Ordinary people were victims of the Holocaust, ordinary people perpetuated the Holocaust, and ordinary people did heroic things to rescue ordinary victims from the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Liberated on 27 January in 1945, Auschwitz Birkenau was the Nazis’ largest concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered – a million of them Jews.

The Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jews during the Holocaust – more than two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. Without the banality of evil and without collaborators across the continent, the Holocaust could not have claimed so many innocent lives.

This year’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day also serves as a reminder that ordinary people can save lives and stop evil when they display extraordinary bravery.

Atrocities committed in the last century were all enabled by bystanders and onlookers. The ordinary people who failed to prevent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur all made choices – albeit sometimes impossible ones – that led to murder on an industrial scale.

But amid each catastrophe, there were ordinary people displaying extraordinary bravery, either by standing up to the persecutors, refusing to collaborate with murder or shielding victims from their latent fate.

As young Jewish trade unionists, we implore the members of our movement to understand the importance of commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day this year and every year.

Hatred never starts with genocide – it starts with rhetoric. The rise of the far right and of authoritarianism overseas threatens us all.

At home, attacks on minority groups are growing year-on-year. Hatred is on the rise and it is our job as a collective to fight it, and ensure that our extraordinary heroism is displayed by more ordinary people.

The Community Security Trust (CST) documents antisemitic incidents and tracks the impact of antisemitism in society and its prevalence, while working to combat it and actively protect Jewish communities.

Last year, it recorded 2,255 instances of antisemitic hate crime, including a spike in verbal abuse shouted from vehicles and 173 incidents of physical assault.

This represents a 34% rise since 2020 and the largest yearly record of antisemitic hate crime since CST began documenting as the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ Community Security Organisation in 1984.

These figures drive us to fight racism and remind us all why we cannot be bystanders to hate. We must robustly combat Holocaust denial and distortion. If every one of our one million-plus union stands in solidarity with victims of abuse and persecution, then we ordinary members can make a material difference to ordinary people’s lives.

The trade union movement draws its strength from its members. As the largest trade union in the country, we encourage UNISON branches to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day by accessing the resources available from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and to distribute copies of Hope Not Hate’s report on Antisemitism in the Digital Age – an insightful document outlining how social media giants have failed to counter extremism on their platforms.

We can resource ourselves to tackle antisemitism in our workplaces and our communities – we must stand resolutely against hate in all its forms.

Marking Holocaust Memorial Day

The article Blog: Remembering the ‘banality of evil’ is of vital importance first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Marking Holocaust Memorial Day

Every year UNISON marks Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration and death camp.

We remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution, including Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, LGBT+ people, Black people, trade unionists and political opponents of the Nazis.

We also remember and commemorate the victims of more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Each year, Holocaust Memorial Day has a specific theme, which for 2023 is Ordinary People.

This theme will enable us to think about the lives of ordinary people caught up as victims. It will focus attention on the way that the silence and complicity of ordinary people also allowed these terrible events to occur.

It charges us to recommit as a trade union to bringing our collective efforts to bear to challenge antisemitism, intolerance and the politics of division and hate.

The Holocaust Memorial Trust has produced free guides and resources to help your workplace or UNISON branch organise events and activities around this theme.

The trust has also created guides to getting involved that feature tailored advice to support trade unions and workplaces organising activities to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

To find out more, access a wide range of resources and order free activity packs, visit the trust’s website at hmd.org.uk.

No matter the scale of your event or activity, the trust would welcome learning about how your workplace or UNISON branch commemorates the day. Whether your activity is private or open to the public, you can let them know here.

The Holocaust Education Trust also offers guidance notes and suggested readings which you can access here.

UNISON also supports the work of Generation 2 Generation (G2G), a charity that provides speakers to tell their family Holocaust stories online or face-to-face to a variety of audiences.

Through these engaging and historically accurate presentations, integrating first-hand survivor testimony, G2G works to ensure the lessons of the Holocaust are learned, promoting tolerance of all groups in society.

You can find out more about this important work and vital survivor testimonies here.

To consider how your branch can work with G2Gnot just during Holocaust Memorial Day, but all year round:

Blog: Remembering the ‘banality of evil’ is of vital importance

 

The article Marking Holocaust Memorial Day first appeared on the UNISON National site.