Like dust we rise

Not since the Vietnam War have so many people across the world taken to the streets to defend progressive values, with women’s marches organised in dozens of cities globally on Saturday (January 21), including in the UK.

A strong contingent of Unite members joined women, children, some men and even pet dogs in London – all from vastly different age groups and different walks of life – all there to stand up against the misogyny and hatred espoused by the new Donald Trump presidency in the US.

In a remarkable showing of solidarity with sisters and brothers in Washington D.C., whose own Women’s March drew an estimated half a million people, nearly 100,000 protestors brought London to a standstill as the march wound its way from Grosvenor Square outside the American Embassy to Trafalgar Square.

A particularly cold afternoon could not suppress the defiantly joyful, carnivalesque atmosphere at the march, with protestors carrying signs that read ‘We shall overcomb’ – in reference to Trump’s often ridiculed hairdo – ‘Keep your tiny hands off our rights’, ‘Fight like a girl’ and ‘Love trumps hate’, among others.

On the same day (January 21), Unite BA mixed fleet cabin crew, who are now in the midst of a dispute over poverty pay, held a protest outside M&S stores to highlight the fact that cabin crew earn on average £6,000 a year less than M&S staff to sell the retailer’s meals on short-haul flights.

After the protest, Unite BA cabin crew joined the Women’s March.

‘Two sides of the same coin’

Unite regional secretary Peter Kavanagh noted that the BA protest and the wider Women’s March against Trump were two sides of the same coin.

“I think it’s quite appropriate because 70 per cent of BA mixed fleet are women workers,” he said. “The gender pay gap is a huge issue. It’s been really good to link up the two things — people’s fear of what’s going to happen in the so-called free world, with Trump now leading in America, and what’s happening industrially in British Airways.”

The Unite BA cabin crew who UNITElive spoke to agreed.

Rachel*, who described her plight as she struggles to subsist on meagre wages working for British Airways, said the Women’s March was “all relevant to what’s going on across the world”.

“People everywhere are unhappy with the status quo,” she said. “People are sick of being taken advantage of by people at the top who earn hundreds of times more than the average worker. It’s just not fair. That’s why we’ve come along to lend our support.”

 

Andrea*, who explained that working for BA as mixed fleet means at the end of the month, she and her colleagues cannot afford food – many she said virtually starve themselves downroute because food is so expensive – agreed that the BA dispute and the demands at Saturday’s Women’s March are “definitely interlinked”.

“People here are protesting against Trump who sits high up in an office as a businessman, not a real president supporting the concerns of working people, and we’re fighting against the big fat cats as well,” she said. “As cabin crew, the majority of whom are women or LGBT people, we stand together with the protestors today who just want equality in our jobs and in our lives.”

Unite regional officer Lindsey Olliver agreed.

“So many of mixed fleet crew, Unite members, are young women and gay men, and many of the crew often go to America as well,” she explained. “So they’re here today to be with other like-minded people and publicise what BA are doing to cabin crew, forcing them to live on a poverty wage.”

‘Amazing’ turn out

Unite Community co-ordinator Liane Groves, who led a large group of Unite members at the march, said that it was “amazing to see 100,000 people all standing up for progressive values.”

“We sent a strong message that we all want an inclusive society,” she said. “Unite members were out in full force because as trade unionists we believe in and will stand up for equality.”

“The threat that the Trump presidency represents to workers’ and women’s reproductive rights is very real,” she said. “We stand with our sisters and brothers in American trade unions in solidarity in their fight for equality — a fight which is ours too.”

As the march culminated at a rally in Trafalgar Square – which could not fit all the tens of thousands of protestors and so saw many of them spilling out into surrounding streets – various speakers addressed the crowds, including Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland (pictured below with Unite BA campaigners).

“What I want us to celebrate here is the Women’s March in Washington, D.C, which hundreds of thousands of women are crossing America to be part of. We are with you side by side, sister to sister – 700 hundred marches, 70 countries in seven continents,” Holland said. “We are making history.”

Quoting verse from the American poet Maya Angelou, Holland said to rousing applause, “You may write me down in history/With your bitter, twisted lies,/You may trod me in the very dirt/But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

Highlighting that she came to the march to represent the trade union movement, Holland noted that of the UK’s 6.5m trade union members, 1.4m of whom belong to Unite, “the majority, 3.5m of them, are women – who knew?”

Pics by Mark Thomas