TUFI-Unison Fringe Event 2009
TUFI held a packed fringe event on 17 June for over 50 Unison delegates attending the union’s annual conference in Brighton.
The overall message of the event was “pro-peace-anti-boycott” and sparked a lively discussion, persuading a number of delegates to speak against the negative motion debated at the conference the following day.
The speakers included: Terry McCorran, a Unison branch secretary from Northern Ireland, Chris Hudson, a peace activist, and Eric Lee, who spoke for the new global organisation Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP).
Chris Hudson spoke about his experiences of working as the head of the South African anti-apartheid movement in Ireland and criticised those that tried to draw parallels with the situation in Israel. Terry McCorran then talked about the positive work that trade unions had done to help the peace process in Northern Ireland and how they should do the same with Israel and Palestine instead of listening to the pro-boycott activists who were only attempting “to drive a wedge between the two sides”.
Speaking for TULIP, Eric Lee finished by saying that the anti-Israel activism in the UK trade union movement was not found in other countries and should not be seen as the norm.
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