When a visitor enters the Casa Bar in central Liverpool, evidence of a community's transformation is visible from the front door. Black and white photos of a dockers' strike line one wall, while on another, freshly mounted posters advertise an initiative to galvanise an area that has long since lost its industrial heritage.
The Casa is one of the founding branches of a community membership programme launched by Britain's largest trade union, Unite. For 50p a week, people not in work over the age of 16 can receive a range of benefits, including access to Unite's legal helpline, debt counselling and assistance on claiming benefits. Unite says the scheme is a natural extension of its activities and values, but it is also an attempt to reclaim members who have been lost to economic upheavals over the past three decades.
Maria Checkland, 38, is the volunteer secretary of the Casa Unite Community branch. The door outside says "Liverpool dockers" but the scheme hopes to usher in a new generation of trade union members. "There used to be 20,000 people working on the docks but now there are 250. Unions have to move with the times," says Checkland.
"There are fewer jobs available, so all the people who would historically have been in unions cannot be in a union. That's why community branches are perfect for people who have never been in a union."
The branch has 140 community members including students, long-term unemployed people, retirees and, symbolically, Unite's general secretary Len McCluskey, who cut his union teeth in the nearby docks. The inaugural meeting earlier in the year discussed a range of issues from benefits advice to ongoing repairs to the Casa, which also houses office space and is a listed building. Owned by 200 former dockers, the building has always had an open door policy for those in need, says Checkland. "It is unique. The community is already here."
An example is Nicholas, 45, who says he is worried about losing his benefits. "I have been coming to the Casa for six years. I was a psychiatric patient and they helped me here. Unite is going to be a support for me because disabled rights have taken a real battering," he says.
A cornerstone of David Cameron's "big society" vision is for non-government organisations to plug a hole left by the withdrawal of public services by taking over provision of tasks once provided by the state. It is safe to assume that No 10 did not envisage Britain's biggest union entering the fray. Within its first four months, Unite has set up 60 community branches across the UK and attracted around 1,000 new members.
Steve Turner, Unite's director of executive policy, who heads the community membership initiative, says the move is "redefining Cameron's big society".
"It [big society] is not the terminology we would have used, but trade unionism has always been about the big society. We represent all walks of life, and all sectors of our economy have been represented by trade unions."
Even if the programme is a roaring success and other unions follow suit, it seems unlikely that the UK-wide trade union movement will return to its heyday of the late-1970s when it had 13 million members. That total now stands at 6.5 million.
"We are a trade union representing people at work and the troubles they face. But we are trying to supplement that," Turner says. "How do we instil in our communities trade union principles of justice, fairness, dignity, solidarity? How do we extend our political and social reach back into our communities?"
Collective voice
As well as providing services to plug holes left by public service cuts, these new branches will also join union campaigns against coalition policies. "We cannot win the battle for the NHS simply by conducting a ballot of our members in the NHS. Defending the NHS is about me, my neighbours, our community, standing up for our NHS. So we are engaging with communities to find a collective voice for some of the most vulnerable people in our society," says Turner.
How this new form of trade unionism will evolve, he adds, is up to the branches themselves, whether it is campaigning against the closure of a bus route, organising rent strikes to stop evictions or whole residential areas coming together to secure discounted energy deals.
Pilgrim Tucker, 41, is standing outside a jobcentre in Archway, north London, on a weekday afternoon handing out leaflets to people who, like her, have struggled to find work in recent years. A trained community worker, she is due to start a new job soon for a local authority, but it attempting to establish a community branch in her part of the capital.
"I hope that the government is right and the private sector expands and jobs are created," she says. "But if that does not happen the need for this over the next few years is going to be huge. As long as people know we are there, when they feel that need, we will be there for them. There is nothing like that at the moment."
Only five people attended the first meeting, at a local community centre, but Tucker is optimistic. "You can get people with similar experiences together and they realise what they have in common. Then you add the rights and benefits advice that we are providing."
Her afternoon's work brings at least one potential recruit. Garry, recently unemployed – "being on the dole is alien for me" – says he will sign up out of a sense of "solidarity" for fellow jobless people. Clutching his leaflet, he adds: "Some people feel helpless but this gives you a bit of empowerment."
The Guardian
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