1 Gmb Congress 2012
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GMB CONGRESS 2012 ……………….. SIS. MARY TURNER MBE (President) (In the Chair) …………………. Held in: The Brighton Centre, Brighton on: Sunday, 10th June 2012 (Congress) Monday, 11th June 2012 (Morning: Congress/Afternoon: Section Conferences) Tuesday, 12th June 2012 (Section Conferences) Wednesday, 13th June 2012 (Congress) and Thursday, 14th June 2012 (Congress) ……………………… PROCEEDINGS DAY FOUR (Wednesday, 13th June 2012) ……………………… (Transcript prepared by: Marten Walsh Cherer Limited, 1st Floor, Quality House, 6-9 Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1HP. email: [email protected] ………………………… 1 FOURTH DAY’S PROCEEDINGS WEDNESDAY, 13TH JUNE 2012 MORNING SESSION (Congress assembled at 9.30 a.m.) THE PRESIDENT: Will Congress please come to order. Good morning, Congress. Could you please thank the Children from Somerhill Junior School in Hove for their lively entertainment this morning and for waking us up. (Cheers and applause) Congress, I would like to welcome them on stage and they have all been given a GMB goody bag with a special edition T-shirt. As a thank you, we would like to give the school a cheque for £2,000 to help them. (Presentation made amidst applause) A SOMERHILL JUNIOR SCHOOL TEACHER: Thank you so much for being such an appreciative audience and thank you for giving us the opportunity to play to you today. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. ANNOUNCEMENT: THE PRESIDENT: If anyone has any photos that they would like to be included in the end-of-Congress slideshow, the funnier the better, then please see Charlotte in the Press Office upstairs. Could I welcome delegates back from your Section Conferences where I am sure there have been some lively debates and interesting speakers. We have five Social Policy motions carried over from Sunday‘s business and we will try and take those later today if time permits so please listen out for further announcements. We will also take Emergency Motion 2 this afternoon. STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE REPORT NO. 5 THE PRESIDENT: I call on Helen Johnson to move Standing Orders Committee Report No. 5. SIS. H. JOHNSON (Chair, Standing Orders Committee): Congress, I am moving Standing Orders Committee Report No. 5. The SOC has been informed that the following two motions have been withdrawn: Motion 76 – Temporary/Agency Workers, from Birmingham & West Midlands Region, and Motion 141, GMB Political Monitoring, from Southern Region. Emergency Motions. The SOC has accepted one further emergency motion, Emergency Motion 4 – Job Losses in UK Manufacturing, standing in the name of Midland & East Coast Region. The SOC recommends that this emergency motion be heard in the morning session of Congress today. 2 The SOC has given permission for a video to be shown in relation to Remploy which will be shown later this morning, and for a video to be shown of Cammell Laird, whilst Motion 174 is considered on Thursday morning. On the subject of times for speakers, in view of the outstanding number of motions still to be debated, please be aware that the SOC are considering speaking times. President and Congress, I move Standing Orders Report No. 5. THE PRESIDENT: Does Congress accept Standing Orders Committee Report No. 5? Standing Orders Committee Report No. 5 was ADOPTED CEC POLITICAL SPECIAL REPORT (Continued) THE PRESIDENT: Congress, we will now continue our debate on the CEC Political Special Report and political motions which we suspended on Monday. I will call for speakers from the two regions who did not get a chance to speak on the report, and then I will take any other speakers. Then we will move to the vote on the Report. Will speakers from the South Western Region and Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region comes to the front. SIS. J. SMITH (South Western): Congress, I am speaking for the South Western Region on the CEC‘s Political Special Report. The South Western Region wholeheartedly supports the CEC Political Special Report. It is an excellent document and asks many pertinent questions, questions we need to be asking and getting answers to to put before you. We had 13 years of New Labour which did not deliver as much as we in the trade union movement could have hoped for. We need the Labour Party to get back to its socialist roots and to capture the five million votes lost at the last general election. There is time to bring forth and nurture candidates who hold our values. We need to bring forth candidates who support the ordinary working people of this country and are not in politics for self-advancement . Let us ensure that our future politicians have some experience of real life. We have seen over the last few decades potential candidates who have come straight from university, gone into research posts but had no experience of what I call real work. Many have proved to be insular, closed in the political environment and with no experience of the real world. What we don‘t want are careerists who have no real rapport with or understanding of ordinary working people. The South Western Region agrees that the 14 proposals need to be adopted, and adopted quickly, in order that we can go into the next election supporting the Labour Party with policies that this country needs. Let us bury New Labour once and for all and move on with a progressive party that can be seen by the electorate as one which has their interests at heart. That can be done. We want a government that is working for the betterment of the people it serves. Congress, South Western Region supports the CEC‘s Political Special Report. (Applause) 3 BRO. I. KEMP (Yorkshire & North Derbyshire): Congress, I am speaking in support of the CEC‘s Political Special Report. President and Congress, I am sorry, Paul, it‘s me you‘re listening to. Colleagues, I hope that Ed Miliband‘s going to get a copy of this report just to see how he can return Labour from being the ‗party of disillusion‘ back to being the party of hope and justice that I first joined when I was 16. After forgetting its core values and its core supporters, and after 13 years of dashed hopes, millions of voters, including some of our members, deserted Labour at the last election. After seeing the spivs and speculators prosper under New Labour, is it any wonder, although we welcome this report in the Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region, that some of our members still have reservations about our links to the Labour Party, especially our financial ones? To give us a strong political voice and a party that shares our members‘ hopes and aspirations, we cannot rely on those careerist and drawing room politicians who hi- jacked the Labour Party, and we especially cannot rely on those spivs in Progress. After all, who was it whose money and hard work got Labour‘s gains in the council elections in May? It certainly wasn‘t the millionaires and luvvies who benefited from the last Labour Government and certainly not those in Progress, who would have loved to have seen Labour councillors lose their seats. In order to rebuild our Labour Party, we have got to work with the rest of the labour movement to encourage our members to be active within the party, to give us a loud and strong voice on the issues affecting us. We must hold all of our Labour politicians to account. Using the measures highlighted in the report, we can rejuvenate the Labour Party from the grass roots up, but also we must change. We must change and adapt our structures to encourage political activism, to educate and inform and to support our members being engaged in the political process. I am proud to say that Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region already has some of these structures in place. To those comrades who say that our future is outside the Labour Party, I give you this warning that, maybe, should have been in the Report. It took 45 years from it being founded for Labour to form its first government. We can‘t waste another 45 years looking for a party with pure socialism. As the great Nye Bevan said: ―For socialism to succeed, it doesn‘t have to be 100%, and if it were such dogmatic purity would be barren.‖ Instead of being out in the wilderness, Comrades, grasp this opportunity, reclaim our Labour Party, invigorate it with our ideas and values. Congress, fight for our political future starts here and now. Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region stands ready to man the barricades to carry that fight forward. Yorkshire & North Derbyshire Region supports the CEC‘s Political Special Report. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Ian. Does anyone else wish to come in on the debate? If you do, please come forward. BRO. M. COPPIN (Midland & East Coast): Congress, I am speaking in support. President and Congress, one year into my position as a GMB-elected Labour 4 councillor – not a GMB-sponsored councillor – I was elected with the biggest vote return in the whole district for a trade union councillor. (Applause) In my district we have already more than tripled our trade union councillors. They are not all GMB but, nevertheless, active trade unionists. We are bringing to the forefront the very issues and aspirations of our members who overwhelmingly voted for us. To be frank, the most difficult job as a new active councillor and trade union councillor is to bring on board the old guard, the gravy-train mob who don‘t feel the need to change. We are labelled the ―awkward squad‖ because we do challenge outsourcing, we support the living wage, we insist on scrutinising decisions of officers and the cabinet, and we insisted that the wages saved from last November‘s strike be spent by the local community groups and not go to pay more on consultants.