My dad’s lifelong fight against injustice was an inspiration”
“T
rade unions are the real defenders of the disadvantaged and those who really need a voice in society,” says new UNISON president Chris Tansley. A child social worker from Nottingham, Chris had a deeply religious childhood with a father who was a lay preacher in the Reformist church. “Despite my upbringing I’ve never been religious, but my dad’s lifelong fight against injustice was an inspiration. He was radical in his own way,” he says. Chris’s mother worked as an overlocker in a factory in Nottingham’s famous Lace Market, along with six of her sisters, producing underwear for firms such as M&S. Chris left school and trained to be a nurse, an unusual choice for a young man at that time. He enjoyed the work, but after two years decided it wasn’t for him. “I’m better at working with people, than in medical treatment,” he says. His social work career started when he went to work with Wandsworth Community Relations in London working in a specialist nursery for Black children with autism in the 1970s. It was during this time that Chris joined the demonstrations against the National Front in London and got involved in the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. His commitment to fighting racism and the far right continues – his chosen presidential charity is Hope Not Hate, the campaign that counters racism and fascism. Chris then moved to Liverpool and worked with the Simon community offering sheltered housing for some of the many homeless alcoholics in the city. Finally in 1978, he trained to be a social worker. He joined the union as soon as he got his first job, and was soon active in his branch. His first major intervention was to introduce computers, a radical move in the 1980s, which he drove through despite some opposition. The father of two teenage children, Chris is still a governor at his local Nottingham infants school after 20 years, and has sat on employment tribunals for the last seven years. He has always used his position on UNISON’s NEC to highlight the valuable and often undervalued work that social workers do. And he is concerned to make sure that UNISON is the union for all the members who are harder to reach, and to draw them in. “I was always convinced that the best way to give maximum support for all our members – and to get at those pockets who
were disenfranchised – was to get the union organised. And I think our union’s a lot better now than it was.” But he’s under no illusion that he’s taking over the presidency at one of the most difficult times for our members. “What we’re involved with is back to the future – it’s Victorian values. This is the worst government we’ve had, worse than Thatcher,” he says. His determination is impressive, however, and as a seasoned campaigner, he even manages to be cautiously upbeat. “I don’t want to go backwards on all the progress we’ve made since those days. But the arguments against the austerity measures are now starting to be heard in other European countries and in America. We won’t let them take us backwards,” he says. ■ Clare Bayley c.bayley@unison.co.uk
ACTNOW Find out more about Chris’s presidential charity at hopenothate.org.uk
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