Clare Middlemas on “Living your Solidarity” – APHEDA People

Asked what solidarity means for her, Clare Middlemas told us:

“Solidarity is love, that love for your fellow human being, your fellow worker, and your fellow people. It is that love in action.”

Clare begun her practise of solidarity in her university days, organising her classmates to join the student union. She was then recruited by the West Australian Community and Public Sector Union, working as an organiser and campaigner for the union when she was introduced to the work of Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA.

“I remember thinking how proud I was that our movement has an organisation like APHEDA. For a younger generation of workers coming through it is such an incredible thing to think that we set up our own justice organisation.”

Joining Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA was a no-brainer for Clare: “I’m an internationalist,” she explains.

“Capital is global, so the workers’ movement needs to be global as well. It’s not enough to just be fighting injustices in our own backyard, because it’s part of a bigger picture. To really make gains for workers here, we also need to be making gains for workers everywhere, it’s all part of the same struggle.”

And as the great advances that the union movement have achieved over the years come under threat from authoritarians and free-marketeers, Clare says that “we have to counter that by building solidarity, and by educating people about the source of our problems.”

As the International Officer of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Clare is tasked with building this solidarity on a daily basis, but her membership of Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA is for Clare another way of “living your values and living your solidarity”:

“Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA isn’t a charity, it organises and builds unions, it helps build the workers’ struggle around the world. If you’re a unionist, you’ve got to join!”