This year I attended the WISERA annual conference for the first time ever, as part of the Ireland branch delegation.
As a first-timer, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Upon entering the venue, I recognised a few faces from fellow workers that had previously visited us in Ireland, who quickly welcomed us and made us feel at home. I immediately felt amongst friends.
For three days I got to speak, eat and drink with fellow workers from all over the place, not only from Scotland or England, but also from locations as far as Germany, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus… I got to make friends.
This might not seem that relevant when you think about a union’s annual conference, where the main aspect is to work on union structures, strategies and goals, but I feel the social aspect was a key part of the whole event.
When you are part of a radical grassroots union, you don’t get to speak to a lot of people about your revolutionary dreams, and this can be quite isolating. You might sometimes feel like some sort of nerd and find it hard to engage in this type of conversations with most people, even family members.
To put it simply, in Bristol we were all nerds! Jokes aside, this was a liberating feeling. I got to hear from many others the same worries and struggles we are going through as a branch in Ireland, the same excitement upon meeting people from so many different backgrounds that were as happy to talk to me as I was to talk to them.
This experience sharing was inspiring and empowering. It all made me realise something quite simple, that at the core of our struggle against capitalism, patriarchy and all the injustices in this world, we are fighting for a world where you can make friends with anybody, anywhere. And we are not alone in this fight.
From A Fellow Worker