Solidarity lives in Manchester

I was carried through my night shift last night by the buzz from attending the demonstration to defend Karen Reissmann held in Manchester yesterday. It was a truly inspiring event - lively and loud.

Over one thousand people, by my estimate, came to join the march despite the rain and to shout and clap and sing in defence of the right of trade union activists to carry out their basic trade union duties of defending the jobs and services of their members.

Karen was suspended and has now been sacked by her employer and, unusually in these cases there isn't even the pretence of it being about anything other than trade union victimisation. Karen was sacked for speaking to the press in her capacity as a trade unionist against the privatisation of mental health services. In fact, her "offence" was to truthfully point out that voluntary sector organisations pay less well than the NHS and can therefore not attract the same highly experienced staff to stay with them.

As if this was not crass enough, she was also charged with, and convicted of, three other gross misconduct offences - telling people that she had been suspended, telling people that she was innocent, and *allowing* the press to print misleading information about her case.

I'll just give you all a moment to try and digest the true implications of these charges. Sacked for protesting her innocence. If they could have tried her by tieing her to a rock and throwing her in a river to see if she proved her witchcraft by not drowning I think they would have given it a go.

The wonderful response from Karen's own branch members was instantaneous and solid - 150 community health workers are now on indefinite strike action with whole branch days of industrial action taking place too. And the response from across the union movement has clearly understood that if we let Karen's employer get away with this appalling act, we not only risk losing this fantastic trade unionist, but we also allow the employers to dictate everywhere how and whethe we campaign against their decisions - and that spells the end of effective trade unionism.

The next stage is a Day of Solidarity to be held on December 5th. That's not very far away, so anyone who can should be trying to organise some kind of lunchtime protest or event to show that we are all standing side by side with Karen.