Labour Party fraternal address to Congress 2006
Labour Party fraternal address to Congress 2006
Sir Jeremy Beecham, Tuesday 12th September 2006
The President: This year's Labour Party fraternal delegate to Congress is the Chair of the Labour Party National Executive Committee, Sir Jeremy Beecham. As a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne, former Chair of the Local Government Association, and solicitor specialising in industrial injury claims, Sir Jeremy has worked closely with trade unions over many years. Sir Jeremy, you are very welcome to our Congress. We look forward to hearing what you have to say to us.
Sir Jeremy Beecham: Thank you, Gloria. In view of the current litigation on equal pay and equal value, it is very generous of Congress to invite a North East solicitor to address this momentous occasion, but then we all have our cross to bear.
It is exactly 100 years ago since a new force burse on the political scene destined to play a significant role in the shaping of British society. Born of the union between the trade union movement, the ILP, and socialist societies, the Parliamentary Labour Party achieved 100 years ago its first success with the repeal of the infamous Taffvale Judgment, the first of a long catalogue of achievements in the interests of working people and their families promoted by that enduring partnership.
Now as with any partnership there have been over the years, and still are, disagreements about the pace and sometimes even the direction of travel, but the best evidence of the value of that partnership lies in the persistent efforts of our political opponents to disrupt it. Currently, this takes the form of a naked attempt by the new cuddly Conservative Party to interfere with and destroy the constitutional relationship of trades unions affiliated to the Labour Party and to disrupt the financial links between us.
Their spokesman complains that trades unions have contributed £50m to the Party over a five-year period. Given that there are 2.5m affiliated members all of whom are entitled to participate in the working of the Party, that amounts to a contribution of 8 pence per week per head, and this is described by the Tories as 'the elephant in the room' on the issue of party funding.
You may have seen a photograph in last week's papers of a garlanded and glum Sir Anthony Bamford, who is the boss of JCB, alongside David Cameron seeking to garner votes by doing world tours, meeting famous people, and in this case going to India. Sir Anthony Bamford has donated a million pounds through a very secretive body called the Midlands Industrial Council, a sort of alcoholics anonymous for Tory Party donors to David Cameron. I would rather have an elephant in the room than a JCB in the garage. While we are talking about JCBs I do hope that Labour MPs will stop trying to use one on the Labour Party.
The current review of party funding must not interfere with Labour's century old trade union link or restrict the rights of trade unionists to support collectively the political party of their choice. The link with Labour, after all, has fostered huge social advances. People are inclined to forget just how much has been achieved even in these last few years with the Minimum Wage going up again next week, extra protection for part-time workers and people on strike, 250,000 modern apprenticeships with another 50,000 on the way, 2.5 million more people in work than in 1997, many of them in the public services, the virtual end of youth unemployment through the New Deal, a corporate manslaughter bill, and most recently action to overturn that unjust court decision affecting sufferers from mesothelioma. I hope that can be extended, by the way, to those who suffer from pleural plaques, equally the victims of a recent court decision. These are among the fruits of our partnership, most recently enshrined in the Warwick Agreement.
Let us not forget the great strides made in the realm of family life and work life balance, with maternity and paternity leave, bank holidays, holidays with pay and much improved childcare and child tax credits, lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty.
The Tories principal contribution to work life balance when they were in power, of course, was to impose enforced leisure on 3 million unemployed men and women. They have consistently voted against all the legislation to help working people, which they now claim belatedly to support in principle, in principle but never in practice.
Progress has also been made in compensating the victims of failed pension schemes and Labour is committed to restoring the earnings link in pension provision.
Of course, there is still much to do in the realm of pensions and welfare reform, increasing the skills of our workforce, and making our economy more competitive, in a mixed economy, public, private, and third sectors can learn from one another, but we need to be hard-headed about this. Productivity in the UK remains stubbornly low. It does not follow, therefore, that the private sector model could or should be translated to the public sector, or the public services, and it is outrageous that under-performance in the private sector seems to be grotesquely well rewarded with massive salaries, share options, and pay-offs.
I have to say as a Newcastle United supported I have become used to the spectacle of excessive non-performance related pay.
The public service ethos, and I stress public service are not simply public sector ethos, has much to offer and it is time that local government and other parts of the public sector got off the back foot and began either on their own or in partnership with other sectors to compete in the provision of services across a much wider range than traditionally we have been pursuing but, of course, on a level playing field. Here the trade union movement has a significant role to play, recruiting and representing members in all sectors just as in the global economy they need to work with their counterparts abroad to protect workers from exploitation.
Brendan Barber's speech yesterday about the protection of the vulnerable employee has a key message: we must not allow right wing extremists or the tabloid press to inflame people against migrant workers but, equally, we must not allow unscrupulous employers to undermine responsible employers or the pay and conditions of workers generally. We therefore need more rigorous inspection and enforcement of the Minimum Wage, gangmaster and health and safety legislation, and indeed measured increases in the Minimum Wage to achieve these objectives.
Mention of that international dimension reminds me that it is exactly 70 years ago this summer since the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War which inspired so many in the trade union and labour movement to fight for freedom. Amongst a few survivors of the international brigades we can of course number that giant of the trade union and labour movement, Jack Jones.
Amongst much else the Spanish Civil War produced a poem by W. H. Auden in which he asks, 'What's your proposal to build the just city?' Building the just city was then, is now, and always will be the shared aim of the trade union movement and the Labour Party, and I am delighted to bring the Party's fraternal greetings to Congress today. I will be equally delighted by an outbreak of fraternity in the Labour Party itself.
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