13.07.2011

Convenor hung out to dry

AJ Byrne slates Unite's inaction and SWP vacillation

Abdul Omer, then a member of the Sudanese Communist Party, fled Sudan in 1977. Following the counter-coup of Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry against the communist-backed attempt at power in 1971, SCP leaders were being executed and members were forced into hiding. Omer was sent to Britain for medical treatment following a strike on his behalf by students at the University of Khartoum. They collected the money needed for him to go. He emerged from the plane weighing just six and a half stone and at death’s door. He had been six years on the run.

Having joined the Socialist Workers Party, Omer was elected convenor at the Sovereign bus company - the only SWP convenor or shop steward in London buses, with its 23,000 drivers represented by some 83 union branches. No other left group has had one either since the mid-80s, such is the rightwing, bureaucratic dominance and collaboration with management.

At a rally during the campaign for pay parity in July 2008, Steve Hart, then Unite regional secretary, said, to prolonged cheering: “We are saying that it is not right that the driver of a No13 bus going down Oxford Street, employed by Transdev, gets 18 grand a year and he passes the No25 from East London Bus Group on 27 and a half grand a year. How can it be right that two drivers in the same street, driving the same buses, are £10,000 different in their basis pay?”

But the campaign for pay parity launched by Unite was dropped as soon as Bob Crow from the RMT agreed not to represent the 1,000-plus on the buses who had joined his union and the subprime mortgage crisis struck. However, Abdul Omer took the matter seriously as convenor and negotiated a deal which eliminated the £4,000 gap in pay between Sovereign drivers and the much bigger London United garages, owned by the same company. Drivers had walked out on a wildcat strike in Edgware over the imposition of new schedules, inspired by his leadership. They won total victory. Such action has been very rare on the buses over the last few decades.

This led to Omer’s harassment by Sovereign. First he was suspended following an altercation over a Unite Against Fascism poster. Then, following his return to work, he was outrageously dismissed for making allegations of institutionalised racism against the company, when defending a black member facing disciplinary action. After Omer’s sacking on March 31 2010, the union officials cancelled the agreement he had won on pay parity, with the result that Sovereign were able to win the 251 route from Metroline. The company was very grateful to Unite for their assistance.

On November 16 2010 the online journal Permanent Revolution reported a comment from Jerry Hicks, candidate for Unite general secretary: “Why is it that each attempt by [Omer] and his supporters to raise these issues is met with manoeuvres, evasion and excuses to prevent any campaign? As we face an employers’ offensive that is leading to many more attempts to attack our best activists at BA and beyond, when is Unite going to stand by our reps, beginning with a campaign to defend Abdul Omer Mohsin?”

Omer had asked for Unite’s support in organising a campaign to stop the union-busting at Sovereign, including a ballot for industrial action to win his reinstatement. But the treatment that Omer has been subjected to is shameful, said Hicks. He went on to ask: “How can we allow one of our best activists to be isolated, victimised, sacked and then left with minimal financial support and no official ballot for action?” He pledged that if he was elected general secretary “defending the union and our representatives” would be “an absolute priory”. He was, of course, defeated by Len McCluskey.

But the evasions and manoeuvres by regional industrial organisers at the behest of central leaders like Peter Kavanagh, regional secretary for London and the South East, and Steve Hart, now promoted to the new post of Unite political director, have continued. For instance, they questioned payments to Omer from branch funds; it took several months to find there was nothing amiss.

A letter from Gerry Downing to the Weekly Worker last month stated that the capitulation of the SWP to the United Left meant that “The UL has become an open tool of bureaucratic oppression of all militants within the union to the unprincipled manoeuvres of the top bureaucracy” (June 23). We had less than a week to wait for that dire prediction to be confirmed. When I visited Abdul Omer in Hillingdon hospital on July 3, he told me the details.

The drivers at the two Sovereign garages of Harrow and Edgware had just seen off the attempts of the bureaucracy to get them to abandon the struggle to reinstate him by voting in a new convenor. Both garages soundly rejected this attempt. Omer then prepared for the important quarterly meeting of the regional industrial sector committee (RISC) on June 29 by getting the two branches to move motions demanding a campaign leading to a ballot for strike action (eventually!). They sent them to Steve O’Rourke, the chair of RISC, and to Kavanagh. He also wrote a letter to O’Rourke (copied to Kavanagh) basically complaining that his chances of mobilising the members and getting reinstated were diminished by the apparent reluctance of the union to fight for him.

When he got to the meeting, neither O’Rourke nor Kavanagh were present. The stand-in chair said the case could not be discussed, as he had not received the motions from the branches - someone had apparently ‘forgot’ to forward them. “But I have a copy here,” Omer objected. “No, that will not do. I must get the motions in advance,” claimed the hostile bureaucrat. So no discussion was allowed on the case of the sacked convenor.

But worse was to come. Omer had spent £43 getting to the meeting in Chelmsford despite being on unemployment benefit, so he presented this expense claim to the acting chair at the end of the meeting. The ignorant bureaucrat refused to sign the expenses sheet, saying Omer was not a union member and should not even be at the meeting, as he had not paid his union dues since he was sacked - what back-stabber went to the trouble to dig that out? There was no question of taking a collection to defray his expenses - assuming union rules were deemed to override all natural justice in this monstrous way. Anyway, it seems that other union rules were ignored: Omer should have been informed of the arrears (around £15 at unemployed rates) before being excluded from membership. No-one even told him not to bother coming and so save the fare.

Omer’s house was under a repossession order, as his mortgage was almost three months in arrears. And the stress of all these manoeuvres got to the old battler. He collapsed in Chelmsford town centre on his way back to the station and was taken to hospital. They said he had had a panic attack and discharged him. He collapsed again on the street in Harrow on Saturday July 2 and passed out. They told him he had a heart problem and was kept in hospital for two days. The doctor said the most probable reason for his collapse was stress. If it continued it could cause a massive heart attack. He will have to be monitored regularly by the hospital and his GP.

The SWP has always argued that Omer must keep Unite the union onside; he must not alienate the officers by denouncing their actions in public or they will abandon him, not represent him, and withdraw legal assistance from his industrial tribunal, etc. However, following the SWP’s capitulation to the bureaucracy by agreeing not to criticise the “leftwing general secretary”, matters could only get worse. Steve Hart shared a platform with the SWP’s Ian Allison at Marxism 2011 on Saturday July 2. Ironically they were debating ‘How to build fighting unions’. Ian did not mention Abdul Omer at all, and neither did Steve Hart. But leading SWP member Pete Gillard was called to speak and he demanded that the union arrange a campaign to reinstate him. He did not mention the appalling events of a few days before on June 29. Two Grass Roots Left members, this writer and Billy McKean, put in slips to speak on Abdul Omer, but we were not called by SWP central committee member Michael Bradley, who vetted the slips. It was remiss of us not to stand up and shout out what had just happened and direct the anger of the whole meeting at Steve Hart, who simply ignored Peter Gillard’s demand on Omer and went on to justify the union’s sell-out of the BA dispute.

So is Abdul Omer to be hung out to dry - the result of bureaucratic treachery and cowardly capitulation? Maybe there is enough fight left in the anti-bureaucratic wing of the SWP to stop that happening, but if they fight the bureaucracy openly for Omer’s reinstatement they will surely be expelled from the United Left.

The old fighter is out of hospital now and says he is still up for the fight. We must now demand that the entire labour movement rallies behind this redoubtable communist militant.

Appeal

Abdul Omer urgently needs £1,050 to save his house from repossession. Donations from individuals and union branches can be paid to:

Mr AI Omer, Barclays Bank, account number 20408859, sort code 20-69-15.

Photocopies of Unite branch cheques should be sent to Peter Kavanagh at Unite - the union has promised to match branch donations.

Solidarity messages to Omer at omermohsin2@yahoo.co.uk