“We will fight with our bodies on our streets. We will fight with our voices & brains in the corridors of power. And we will fight with our trade union cards in our workplaces.”
Maryam Eslamdoust, TSSA
Publishes below is an apated version of TSSA General Secretary Maryam Eslamdoust‘s speech from the recent Stand up to Racism trade union conference
Sisters and brothers,
It is an honour to be addressing you today.
And it is uplifting to be in the company of so many people committed to the anti-racist struggle.
I am Maryam Eslamdoust, the General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association.
As I sat down to write my speech for this conference, I began thinking about the theme for this first plenary session.
And of course, I thought about the disgusting scapegoating that we see of refugees, blamed for every ill that our rotten state has failed to address.
And of course, I thought about how people of colour more generally are scapegoated in our media, by our politicians, in our workplaces.
And again, of course, I thought of how the far right’s ideas have been mainstreamed into the rhetoric and policies of our supposedly respectable political parties.
And of course, I thought about how far-right groups are allowed to operate with impunity, even openly espousing terrorism without any consequences.
And far-right groups egged on by the then home secretary, disrupting the solemn commemorations of Remembrance Sunday, while those calling for peace in the Middle East went out of their way to avoid any interference with the remembrance.
And I thought about how this week Suella Braverman has even targeted that pillar of the establishment – The Church of England – for allegedly being too kind to refugees. And how were they too kind? Because they have not banned refugees from being baptised.
Yes, for the racists at the top of our society, we should even be banned from committing to the national church.
But sisters and brothers, it is far too easy if we just wring our hands about the awfulness of the right towards us.
Because as I sat to write this speech, I also thought about the way our own movements exclude, hold back, shame, discriminate against people of colour.
So I thought about our sister, Diane Abbott, lying suspended by the party of labour, because she dared to discuss the nature and meaning of racism against different minority groups.
And I thought how – every time I say anything supportive of Diane, I hear back “yeah but I don’t like her” or “but she’s thick”. Yes, that is right, a state educated black woman who got into Cambridge in the 1970s is apparently thick. And even in this hall there will have been some whose thoughts wandered in that direction when I mentioned her name.
And I thought about how until my election in October 2023, no woman of colour had ever been elected as a trade union general secretary in this country.
And how I was told by activists that they would not be supporting me because one of my white opponents was “one of us”.
And I thought about how I, as a woman of colour, have been publicly attacked for acts done by my white male predecessors – who did not even receive a peep of objection for their actions.
Sisters and brothers, I have sounded out doom and gloom, but I do not mean to damage our hope or our drive.
But I do want us to realise that we must fight on multiple fronts:
- We must fight the politicians who mainstream racist policies.
- We must fight the far right on the streets and with the law.
- We must fight the racism which still haunts our own movements, even where it is often done without any consciousness.
- And we must fight with all our might to rid our workplaces of the racism that every worker of colour faces in their working life – in small ways and in large.
And transport unions have a long history on this workplace front.
We fought and defeated an open colour bar operating on our railways.
Heroes like my sadly missed friend Claude James continued that fight every day of their careers – in his case fighting for his fellow Black workers at Euston and fighting his way to be the first Black EC member of my union.
Fortunately, we do not face such obvious racism as openly operated colour bars today.
But in a way it makes our job as anti-racist trade unionists much harder.
Because we have to tackle the inexplicable disparity between diversity at the bottom rungs, and pale uniformity at the top of every sector.
We must tackle the subtle comments, the insinuations, the implications that every single time a Black worker takes a step up it must be down to some usurpation or illegitimate queue jumping.
Sisters and brothers, we can and will fight and win together. We will fight with our bodies on our streets. We will fight with our voices and our brains in the corridors of power. And we will fight with our trade union cards in our workplaces.
Solidarity.
- You can follow the TSSA here and Maryam Eslamdoust, TSSA General Secretary, here.
- Join Stand up to Racism‘s demonstration to mark UN anti-racism day in March – info here.
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