For the 90 years of Equity’s history, a debate has raged: are we a professional association or a trades union? Do we exist to advance the cause of our members simply as artists, or as artists who are also working people, with the right to a dignified working life? Is our members’ professional interest served by fighting alone in a peculiar industry, or connected to a global struggle shared by every working person? 

Our members and our executive council have made it clear what they want in this year’s general secretary election: a fighting, strong trades union.

Every trade unionist should care about what’s happening inside Equity. Ultimately, our whole movement is about the right of every working person to be an artist, and so how artists are treated as working people should matter to us all.

Less ethereally, the gig economy has been Equity’s reality for the 90 years we’ve existed. As a union that has grown by over 25% in the last 15 years to include 48,000 members, we have exciting lessons for the movement about how to bargain, fight and organise.

I was nominated as Equity Council’s candidate in the weeks before coronavirus threatened to decimate the performing arts and entertainment industries. An honest assessment of how our equalities structures need to change to facilitate radical self-organising, alongside a track record of straightforward industrial success in a decade of austerity, won their confidence. One longstanding member expressed it like this: “It’s a time to be radical, you’ve a pragmatic track record, and I trust you to listen – don’t let us down.”

My manifesto made clear commitments to campaign for the co-operatisation of the BBC between workers and licence fee payers, the devolution of arts funding to local artists and audiences, and a universal basic income. But these political campaigns only make sense – and can only win support – alongside commitments to be, first and foremost, an industrial general secretary.

We need a plan for how hours go down and pay goes up, a plan for what we do to win simple access to our terms and conditions for the underrepresented in our industry – artists who are women, disabled, black and people of colour, trans and working-class.

In a changing industry which should be a key part of a post-carbon economy, the opportunities for Equity to increase the coverage of union agreements is unique. Our membership in the subsidised theatre sector, for instance, now exceeds 80%, and these already unionised and mobile working people retain their union membership when they enter new and growing areas of work such as audiobooks, video games and streaming services. Indeed, we’re the first union in the world to win a collective agreement with Netflix, the archetype of these new frontiers.

These are the lessons I’m eager for us to share with the broader movement – how union membership can endure in a precarious, often freelance workforce, and lead to concrete changes in their working lives. In my eight years looking after commercial touring theatre, we pushed pay up 52% and union membership rose from 46% to 75%. More members of our union are 28 years old than any other age group.

I want every working person in the UK to know that the artists they see on their screens, stages and in pubs, clubs and circuses are union members – and, like them, are fighting a battle against precarity. I believe passionately that sharing our union’s approaches to organising and bargaining can help all unions face the challenges of the 21st century.

But the pandemic has shown clearly that Equity members need solidarity and support from the whole movement. Fighting to save our members’ workplaces and for meaningful support for freelance workers are battles that are far too big for our union alone. We need every trades unionist to say at the top of their voice: communities deserve theatre, working-class art forms like variety have value, and careers in TV and film should be for everyone – not the preserve of a wealthy few.

Few Equity members draw their sole income from the arts, and more than ever before, they expect Equity to stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow unions as they take on the employers who exploit them in their working life away from stage and screen. As their new general secretary, I’ll be at the forefront of giving that solidarity, and of mobilising our whole movement to improve our members’ working lives whichever industry that may be in.

For every trade union, our movement is about working people realising their fullest potential in society. We believe all our members have the right to the time, income, stability and education to fully flourish. 

These three things are true: all working people have the right to be an artist. All artists have the right to dignity in their work. The cause of labour is the hope of the world. At this time of unprecedented threats to our members’ industry itself, I will fight so that Equity plays its fullest role in the struggles to achieve these things.