User:Juliehallam/nigelflanagan=submit

Nigel Flanagan ... "'Nigel Flanagan"' is an active Socialist and Trade Unionist based on Merseyside.

He is the author of the anti-fascist novel ‘The Dog Man and Producer of an award winning documentary film ‘Arek’. A passionate and committed campaigner he has a reputation as a militant and an inspiring speaker.

He was born on 15th July 1961 in Leeds. As a baby he lived in Hunslet and then as a toddler his family moved to Harehills in Leeds. He lived there until leaving for Keele University in 1979 returning unemployed in 1982.

In 1991 he was elected full time Branch Secretary of Sefton NALGO (a forerunner of UNISON) on Merseyside and made a name in the union world from there. As Branch Secretary of UNISON in Sefton he was summoned to Manchester High Court in 1994 for organising illegal strike action, was selected for redundancy in 1995 but won his re engagement - after a campaign supported by UNISON.

Nigel was for 6 years a member of the Socialist Workers Party and spoke at many of their meetings. He left in 2000 after deciding that its programme and activities inside the wider movement were not able to build a more widely supported progressive Socialist and working class alternative to New Labour.

As a trade union militant Nigel was involved in many of the strikes in Sefton against privatisation and redundancies. In particular in 2001 a successful strike by social care workers protected many jobs and services. In 2005 Nigel was sacked after leading a campaign against the selling off of 13,000 council houses despite strike action lasting over 2 months to save his job and that of his trade union colleague Paul Summers. Although the campaign was initially successful the postal ballot of tenants that had rejected the sell - off was overturned in a second ballot held in housing offices. The campaign was raised in the House of Commons by the Labour MP Austin Mitchell. Always an active anti - fascist Nigel is a supporter of the ‘Hope not Hate’ campaign against the BNP. Uniquely though he and close friend and comrade Glen Williams organised an educational project that took young people – many of them in care – to see Auschwitz with Holocaust Survivors Leon Greenman and Arek Hersh. With funding from UNISON, the FBU and Sefton Council over 14 trips were organised and in 2004 the Project won a national award for work with young people. This led to the ‘neo- Nazi’ website ‘Redwatch’ displaying a picture of him with details of his address.

The project led to the production of a feature length documentary, Arek, on the life of Holocaust Survivor Arek Hersh. The film won the award for Best international Film Documentary at the 2005 Miami International independent Film and Video Festival and was also screened in New York. When it was shown in Liverpool at the Philharmonic hall over 1300 people turned out for the premiere.

Nigel now works for UNISON as a Regional Organiser for the North West Region.