Comrades - is an injury to one an injury to all?

[Granma]

You’re a member of a Branch Committee and one of your colleagues on the Committee, the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary, is threatened by Paramilitaries.
Your colleague lives in a working class community where this particular paramilitary group operate and is reticent about reporting the threats to the police who by and large do not operate in the community.

You belatedly report the incident to the police and inform your Union HQ seeking help to have the threat lifted and determine who is behind the threat.

You and the majority of the Committee believe that a current member of the Committee is responsible for being behind the threats. He has a long history with this particular paramilitary group and in the weeks prior to the threats he had his credentials suspended for allegedly threatening violence against the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary.

He makes a counter complaint and the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary’s are also suspended also. The NDC later state that neither Rep has a case to answer and reinstates both their credentials.

A matter of weeks later 3 members of a paramilitary group to which the above Committee member was a past member arrives at the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary’s door and passes a very menacing message to his partner threatening extreme violence against him when they get him.

Both the partner and he stay in a hotel that night for their own safety.

His friends and colleagues on the Branch Committee attempt to get CWU HQ involved in a hope that they will:

1. Work to get the threat lifted
2. Launch an investigation to determine who or what is behind the threat
3. Ensure the safety of the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary and his partner

Over a year later and CWU HQ (Billy Hayes) has not honoured his commitments to you as a threatened Representative of the Union despite the fact that he has been aware (for 1 year) of the name of the alleged perpetrator from within the Committee.

In the meantime, Mr Hayes moves to suspend the Branch 9 Months after the paramilitary threats were delivered. Frustrated at the Branch’s suspension some of the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary’s friends and colleagues on the Committee begin to work once more with the Rep and former committee member believed responsible for the paramilitary threats.

They state that although they find this person repugnant they are forced to work with him to get the Branch’s autonomy back so they can better help their members.

Other friends of the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary believe that the General Secretary Billy Hayes is wrong to suspend the Branch and hold the view that he should have ensured that a thorough investigation should have been undertook to find the individual believed responsible for the paramilitary threats. This suspended group of Branch Officers and Officials opposed the suspension and refuse to work with the former committee member and existing rep.

They choose to believe that an injury to one is an injury to all.

They have openly challenged Mr Hayes’s suspension of the Branch and believe that it is outside the union’s rules.

They choose to believe that the only solution to the deep rooted problems within the Northern Ireland No1 Branch is a full locally independent investigation.

They have submitted 2 propositions to this effect to the General Secretary to Mr Hayes and the entire NEC in the hope that they will be adopted and that the long overdue investigations may commence and determine those responsible for the despicable paramilitary threats are held accountable within the union.

They believe that the General Secretary has a duty of care to the Acting/Deputy Branch Secretary and to all others within the union and if there are strongly held beliefs that a rep from within the union is allegedly responsible for these acts then it should be investigated.

They are firm in their belief that, “an injury to none is an injury to all,â€