Yesterday the Havering Daily ran two stories regarding comments made by Rainham Councillor David Durant.
Today, Councillor Durant writes in response:
The council administration are promoting different forums for different employees to discuss different issues. There are about seven forums at the moment covering a range of different personal characteristics as opposed occupations. These forums are advertised to employees and members and one was recently advertised for Black and Minority Ethnic employees, with a promise that a meeting for White employees would be held at a latter date. These meetings can discuss important matters and I suggested they discuss the government decision to racialize the experimental vaccination roll-out as I fear it will adversely impact on community relations.
I explained why, but at the end as a postscript, I did light-heartedly highlight the difficulty of deciding what forum to attend due to many overlapping differences, and because frankly as an old socialist I think employees should attend trade union meetings to discuss jobs, pay and conditions, not agree to be segregated into forums discussing personal characteristics issues. Of course in their free time employees can attend any meetings they choose, but I don’t think it should be promoted in work time by the administration, and employees should beware an employer tactic to undermine the solidarity needed to defend jobs, pay and conditions
Its unfortunate, but to be expected, that the Administration and Labour have found common cause to attack me for opposing apartheid forums, the new racism, and experimental ‘mass-vaccinations’.