Stand Up To Racism and TUC conference in London

The conference, which starts at 12pm and ends at 4.30pm on 11 February, will be hosted by the National Education Union from their headquarters at Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9BD, although online attendance will also be available.

Registration for the conference is via the SuTR Eventbrite page and tickets are £5 plus fee.

In one of her first official engagements as PCS General Secretary, Fran Heathcote will be among the headline speakers at the conference, alongside other union leaders including Daniel Kebede (NEU), Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA) and Mick Whelan (ASLEF).

Members of the PCS NEC will attend on behalf of the union alongside Fran.

The conference comes in the context of a worrying increase in support for far-right parties and groups across Europe and in the UK.

The UK Government’s own divisive rhetoric around asylum seekers and refugees, underpinned by its Rwanda deportation policy that PCS has campaigned against, has emboldened far-right groups.

These groups have recently sought to spread division and hatred in protests near or outside of hotels housing asylum seekers who are awaiting decisions on their asylum applications.

‘Fighting for anti-racism workplaces’

With the theme ‘Fighting for anti-racist workplaces’, the conference will involve workshop sessions on fighting Islamophobia and antisemitism, building solidarity with refugees and on organising against institutional racism at work.

Plenary sessions will open and close the conference, with the final session concluding on the subject of ‘building the anti-racist movement today’.

Before Christmas, PCS supported other trade unions, charities and campaign groups at a demonstration outside the Home Office against the government’s poisonous anti-refugee agenda.  

As the government ramped up its attacks on refugees and migrants, we repeated our call for the government to adopt our proposed policy of Safe Passage.

This would create a humane alternative to the Rwanda policy, protect our members in the Home Office from being forced to work in an ever more hostile environment, and help prevent the government using the demonisation of refugees in order to try to deflect from their catastrophic failures on people's living standards in the UK.

Reps and members can read more details about the Rwanda campaign as well as the PCS’s Anti-Racism and Anti-Fascism Strategy (2022) on PCS Knowledge (login required).