The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th August 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th August 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
The Musicians’ Union (MU) has recently announced it has now got a membership of 35,000, a healthy density as there are 43,300 professional musicians in Britain, although it failed to mention its peak membership was 40,000 in 1990.
In addition to normal trade union pay and conditions bargaining matters, the union provides specialist benefits such as instrument and equipment insurance, Public Liability Insurance and a Contract Advisory Service. Ever since the invention of the wax cylinder musicians have had difficulties receiving payments for repeats of their work. Securing these in the digital age is a major part of the MU’s work.
The MU began in Manchester in 1893 when a Manchester Musicians’ Union was founded by 20 musicians who soon spread their geographical wings to Britain’s major cities becoming the Amalgamated Musicians Union (AMU) except in London, where the London Orchestral Association was started around the same time.
Its roots were in the then thriving music halls, but it aimed to recruit classical musician and others, although in the 1960s members had mixed views about letting in long-haired pop singers.
Establishing a closed shop was essential for the success of the AMU. When theatres had orchestras to provide background music as well as concerts there were plenty of amateur and moonlighting military bandsmen for professional musicians to contend with. The AMU took care to work with other music hall workers such as stagehands. From an early date it became involved with municipal politics and trades councils to ensure licensing of entertainment venues was conditional on the provision of fair wages and conditions.
In 1907 a successful strike in the London music halls tripled the then 3,000-strong membership. This put it in a strong enough position to launch court cases against troublesome theatre owners and enforced discipline against members undercutting their colleagues. A grim example of its strength was filling the Albert Hall for a memorial concert for the members who played as the Titanic went down.
At Queen Victoria’s 1897 jubilee the union objected to a Hungarian band playing at the celebrations and managed to persuade the Government to ban all foreign musicians from playing unless they had been a resident in the country for two years. These rules later affected visiting American jazz musicians. They in turn were strongly opposed to foreign musicians coming to the USA.
In the 1950s it successfully fought against the colour bar imposed at many British venues by banning its members from working there, and it was an early supporter of boycotts against the apartheid regime by preventing members taking up contracts in South Africa. At present it has been moaning about Brexit because of the restrictions the European Union now places on visiting British musicians because of EU spite.
The MU has always had a problem with many potential members thinking they are artistes and are reluctant to see themselves as workers. To make things worse, some of its more successful members depart once they have collected few gongs.
In 1921 the MU took its present shape as a result of merging with its London rival. The establishment of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) the following year was welcomed by those lucky enough to be employed by the high-minded in its regional and specialist orchestras, which for the first time provided annual contracts with fixed hours and paid holidays.
The end of silent films caused unemployment for musicians, which was only partially offset by the popularity of dance halls as they also used gramophone records.
It failed to ban recordings in cinemas and instead established a partnership with the major record companies to share royalties, an arrangement which still manages to survive today. Thus, the MU has for better or worse a very close relationship with entertainment multinationals.
After the Second World War sales of LPs, as gramophone records became known, became the main measure of success for individual performers and groups. Live performances and tours were the reward for recordings rather than the previous journey from the music hall to recording studio. In the 1980s the MU fought a rearguard action to save some BBC orchestras. Since 1965 the MU had used the defensive slogan of “Keep Music Live” in many battles.
The MU finds it difficult to keep all its members happy. In 2013 it started a “Work Not Play Campaign” to oppose the public house tradition of allowing musicians to play without payment from the host, forcing them to rely on tips. Some of its members objected however, as many landlords will simply not hire musicians if they have to pay them.
In 2022 the MU elected a new General Secretary after the NEC attempted to extend the incumbent’s term for another two years. After lawyers had been enriched, an election was held resulting in a long-term MU official, Naomi Pohl, becoming the first woman to hold the post.
Present Battles
The MU is presently helping to oppose the cuts to Creative Scotland. More draconian cuts are being opposed by the MU in Wales where, as part of drastic cuts to the Arts Council of Wales, the Welsh National Opera (WNO) is planning to cut wages by 15 per cent and make its orchestra part-time. It will no longer be able to undertake any tours if the cuts go ahead. It is an easy target for cuts as not many operas are in Welsh. MU and Equity members are presently balloting for strike action.
Another ongoing MU campaign takes on the mighty BBC to preserve a live band on the BBC’s notorious Strictly Come Dancing programme. It complains that it has halved the normal number of live musicians. This was done as part of COVID-19 social-distancing measures but now remains in place.
Negotiations have persuaded the BBC to retain the full band for four episodes from a previous total of 14 episodes, but the Corporation refuses to reinstate the full live band across the full series.
This means a huge loss of earnings to musicians who played live on the show for 16 years prior to the pandemic.
General Secretary Naomi Pohl said: “The Strictly band is extremely popular with the show’s fans, and we know it’s always better for dancers to perform with live musicians than a recording. A fully live band can respond to what happens on the show, better supporting the production and the dancers.”
She adds that: “There are very few shows on television with a house band now and we don’t accept that Strictly Come Dancing, of all programmes, needs to cut corners in this way. The compromise of restoring the full band to some episodes didn’t go far enough.”
Geoff Ellerby, the union’s National Organiser for Recording & Broadcasting, said: “Given it remains the BBC’s flagship entertainment show, and the very nature of the show has always been based on music and dance, this is a deeply disappointing move, and one we can’t accept. Due to clever camera work by the production team, it may not have been obvious to viewers until now that the on-screen band has been reduced. We hope fans of the show will join our call to restore the full band of musicians to the production.”
This story can be repeated on many other occasions. One such is the present campaign to “Keep Northern Ballet Live!”. The Leeds-based ballet company has already cut touring work due to funding cuts and is planning to cut more musicians’ jobs and replace them with recordings. MU members are already on freelance contracts and some are already using foodbanks to survive as funding has not changed since 2015, a period of high inflation.
Apart from saving jobs, saving venues is also on the agenda. The latest such beneficiary of a battle involving the MU is the Oldham Coliseum Theatre, which is now set to reopen late next year after a successful local campaign that persuaded the local council to pledge £10 million for refurbishment.
Paul Reed, the MU’s Regional Organiser for the North of England, paid tribute to those who came together, saying: “We applaud the efforts of our sister unions, alumni and local residents in banding together to secure the re-opening of Oldham Coliseum Theatre.”
The Realities of ‘Resting’
Another entertainment union is BECTU, which represents those working behind the scenes. It has about 40,000 members working (and often not) in live events, broadcasting, film and cinema, digital media, independent production, leisure, theatre and the arts. Many of these are freelance workers, which means the union has to help sort out literally thousands of individual contracts. It is however the largest union in the BBC.
It is now a section of Prospect, the high-caste civil service union, with which it has had a sometimes difficult relationship in the past.
Like many in the entertainment business, its members are often what actors call ‘resting’. A BECTU survey of its members carried out in July found that 52 per cent of them were out of work with over a third of them planning to leave the business entirely.
Depressingly this 52 per cent was better than the 68 recorded in February. This was due to the scriptwriters strike in America last year, which had a considerable knock-on effect in the UK where a lot of production work is done because the natives speak English and are cheaper than in California.
Only six per cent said they had experienced a full recovery in employment, with a fifth getting into debt or being unable to pay their bills as a result.
The survey quoted a costume cutter who lamented that: “The LA strikes have had such a brutal impact on so many of us here in the UK. I would never have imagined that I would be still out of work 14 months later. We were definitely unprepared for the long haul.” A series producer added: “I have never struggled to find work like this in 25 years. I’ve had nothing at all in seven months. I feel used and discarded.”
A clapper loader complained that: “The industry is an absolute shambles and that’s an understatement. Very few of us had furlough during COVID, with only universal credit. This second setback is beyond crippling – every month people are saying it’s going to get better but we are all still waiting. We have fantastic creative talent that is going to waste.”
BECTU chief, Philippa Childs, noted that: “Clearly, little has materially improved for the workforce and these discussions must be laser focused on how we can collectively make things better for workers, who are critical to the sector’s success but continue to bear the brunt of industry changes.”
Many of the issues affecting the MU and BECTU also involve members of the actors’ union Equity. We hope to focus on them soon.