THE MINUTES OF THE 2019 ANNUAL REPRESENTATIVE CONFERENCE HELD AT THE EUROPA HOTEL, BELFAST FROM 18TH TO 20TH MAY 2019 Present: Maureen Beattie (President – in the Chair) Members of the 2018/20 Equity Council Christine Payne (General Secretary) Equity Representatives and Observers Maximum Attendance: 169 including 116 representatives, 5 Officers and 20 Councillors. Conference was formally convened at 15:03 p.m. The President welcomed representatives. She then read out the Safe Space declaration. She introduced those sitting with her and explained some points of protocol. 1. REPORT FROM THE STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE (SOC) Adam Burns, Chair of the Standing Orders Committee and Stage Management Councillor, welcomed Conference. The Standing Orders Committee were there to organise the business of the ARC throughout the conference on these three days and deal with any queries that representatives might have about the process of the conference, ongoing timetabling and the order of the motions. He asked that representatives let the SOC know as soon as possible if they accepted an amendment or wished to remit their motion to Council. He then went through the protocol on speaking at Conference. With fifty-five motions this year there was significant pressure on the timetable and we wanted to make sure that everybody gets the chance to move their motion. Should a motion not be reached in the timetable section we will seek to find a time for it. If it remained unfinished business it would be remitted to the Council for its next meeting. 1 MINUTES ARC 2019 He said that Motion 24 from the West of England Variety Branch had now been remitted to Council. On Motion 55, the Council amendment had been withdrawn. On motion 16 the first amendment from the Bristol and West General Branch has been remitted to the Council and the second amendment was opposed by Council – the attitude was not remit or oppose as it said in the paperwork. In addition, today Council sitting at the ARC had accepted an Emergency Motion from the Audio Committee. The Standing Orders Committee will schedule this in and inform Conference when that will be heard. The Chair then covered some further procedural points and concluded by wishing the Chair, Officers, Councillors, Representatives, Staff and Observers present a really successful ARC. 2. OBITUARIES The President then introduced Ian Barritt, Vice-President and Julia Carson Sims, Vice-President who read out, in alphabetical order, the names of those members who had passed away during 2018. This was followed by a minute’s silence and a final standing ovation in honour of those who had died. 3. PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, MAUREEN BEATTIE The President greeted Conference and began by recalling her own birth in Ireland and the kindness that people in Northern Ireland had shown to her mother at that time. She said that in July she will have been President for a year and wished to say give thanks to various people: to her fellow Officers for their extraordinary support, to the General Secretary who had been amazing and to staff especially Hilary Hadley, who had been a huge help. as well as John Barclay, Stephen Spence and Matt Hood. But she also wished to thank the wonderful activists who had been understanding and encouraging and who had supported her in what she was trying to achieve. She particularly wanted to thank her dear friend and fellow Officer Ian Barritt. She was delighted to see the General Secretary back and knew that she would be as challenging as ever to those who were trying to put the union or its members at a disadvantage. She went on to say that as many representatives would know this was the end of Mental Health Awareness week and she wanted to talk a little bit about that. She had spoken in her last Presidential column about her own experiences in a business where the appearance of success is so incredibly important, you were expected to look cheerful all the time and say that everything’s great whilst the reality might be very different. Therefore it was really important to support one another and not to be worried about what may seem to you to be something which is too trivial. She said that she had spoken to Addam Merali-Younger who was the current Membership Support Assistant covering bullying, mental health and harassment. He had told her that probably the most common phrase or variation thereof that he heard on the Helpline was “I didn’t know if I could or should contact you about this”. And then often members go on to explain a really challenging situation relating to harassment, abuse or something that is having a terrible impact on their mental health or well-being. So we’ve got to encourage everybody to use the Helpline. She said that members had 2 MINUTES ARC 2019 initially been wary about it wondering whether it was for them or whether it would help but gradually more and more people are beginning to use it. About 20% of the people that phone the Helpline apparently just phone up because they want to talk to somebody and need to share their experience with someone feeling much better afterwards as a result. She gathered that there had been about a 1,000 contacts so far either by phone or email which was not to mention the outreach. And we were linking up with other organisations addressing mental health issues: Spotlight have their own initiative, Mind the mental health charity, Talk, charities like that. Getting together with other groups to try and form a stronger together feeling. The President said that she had wanted to mention this and encourage everybody in this room to spread the word that it’s there for all of us no matter how small your worry. The President also wanted to say a word about the Online Branch. As a member of the Online Branch Committee she wanted as President to support the Branch as best she could and steer it through the current consultation period. During this period we need to work out what its future is, how it is best served and how it can best serve the community of our union. She knew the General Secretary would be speaking more about it later but wished to say this now. The President said that she had made her start in the profession in Variety as a comedy-feed to a not very good comedian. However, it had proved a very good learning curve. This brought her to the excellent work being done under Low Pay No Pay and the fact that more and more engagers were signing up to minimum agreed rates. She had been hearing a lot about the closure of some of the great Variety houses and she recalled the summer seasons spent where her father was working at the time. The big seaside towns had not just summer seasons but also panto seasons and spring and autumn seasons. The closure of many of these had cut down opportunities a lot and meant that many members did work that was very poorly paid or even unpaid. She knew that staff were on the case with this and said that hopefully the work being done on the “legit side” will have a knock on effect for variety, street performers, stand-ups and others in the world of variety. She encouraged representatives to come and see her during breaks in proceedings. She hoped that it would be possible to get through every single one of the motions by Monday and she knew the passion and thought which went into formulating a motion and why you want it ratified by Conference. It’s never satisfactory to miss something out at the end. She was unable to be at Conference on Monday but would do her best to keep up with the Agenda timings for the next two days. The President ended by talking about the Olivier awards to which she and some others from Equity had been invited. They had an Obituaries section and when ITV showed it later that night it was rather badly done. We didn’t see the names, we didn’t see the faces, we saw pictures of a very fine young woman singing and she did a beautiful job with a choir but of course it wasn’t very respectful. So she and the General Secretary had written to ITV explaining the reasons why it was unsatisfactory and had received a very good response from them saying that they completely understood and would be looking into. This was a very pleasing outcome. An awful lot of people make an awful lot of money out of what we do so we needed this respect. 3 MINUTES ARC 2019 4. APPEAL OF BEHALF OF INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ARTISTS’ FREEDOM (ICAF) Ian Barritt, Vice-President, then spoke on the appeal on behalf of the International Committee for Artists Freedom. He said that he had first got involved with ICAF in the 1970s when he attended a demonstration outside the Czech Embassy. This was in support of Vaclav Havel, the writer, and performers who had been expelled from the Czechoslovak performers’ union and had been unable to work. Some of them started the Living Room Theatre where they performed in each other’s homes to keep their craft alive. When we contacted the Czech union about this they said ‘There are no unemployed actors in Czechoslovakia’. Their reasoning was thus. If you were a dissident you got expelled from the union. If you weren’t in the union, you weren’t an actor and therefore there were no unemployed actors in Czechoslovakia.