Munroe Bergdorf, LGBT+ activist, model, writer and broadcaster addressed UNISON’s national delegate conference on Tuesday afternoon, wishing delegates a “Happy Pride Month”. Pride is, by its definition a protest … a push back against shame, she told them.
“It is the remembering and the learning from history.
“As far as we’ve come … we’re now facing a highly funded, concerted and sustained conservative [campaign] to force us back into shame.
“Transphobia is a problem for everyone. Policing of gender. Homosexuality is still illegal in 65 countries.
“The rights we have are not set in stone … none of us are free until we are all free.”
And she continued: “Pride without politics is merely a celebration of privilege.” LGBT+ people must stand “against oppression everywhere”.
The afternoon also saw delegates give their full backing to the union’s Year of LGBT+ Workers.
Photo: Steve Forrest/Workers’ Photos
Eileen Best from the national committee told delegates: “It’s wonderful to see all the rainbow lanyards and that delegates are using their pronouns.
“It costs nothing, but it means a lot to people in our community.
“The year has been a great opportunity for promoting UNISON as the union for LGBT+ workers … actively engaging and recruiting LGBT+ members.
“If you’d told me, when UNISON was formed, 30 years ago, that I would be standing here today as a married women with a wife and a teenage son, I don’t think I’d have believed you.”
For the platform, Kath Owen said: “The NEC is, was and always will be supportive of LGBT+ rights.
“We can always be better allies” she said and condemned the “dog-whistle politics” of Esther McVey’s attacks on rainbow lanyards.
Ryan Callaghan from Salford City, an LGBT+ officer, said that the year is “absolutely not about silo working [but about] understanding what LGBT+ activists bring to our organisation”.
A first-time delegate explained that their pronouns are they/them, but that UNISON is one of the few environments in which they feel comfortable about declaring those pronouns – and that’s an indicator of why the Year of LGBT+ Workers is so important.
