TUC good luck message to World Cup teams

Philosophy Football Diski Party

Speech by Dougie Rooney

4 June 2010

TUC President Dougie Rooney opened the Philosophy Football Diski Party at London's Camden Centre on Friday night with the following remarks (diski is Xhosa for football):

As a Scot, you may be wondering what I'm doing welcoming you to this evening's festivities.

Well I suspect I was chosen partly because I would of course be objective and impartial. As if!

In fact, I'm the President of the Trades Union Congress and a national officer of the largest trade union in Britain, Unite.

We're proud to sponsor this evening's event, and very pleased to see so many of you here to celebrate the fact that next week sees the start of the first ever African world cup.

Football is a people's game - a game for men and women. It's one of the few games that everyone - no matter how poor - can play.

So it's no surprise that trade unionism has flourished not only on the terraces but also on the pitch.

The Professional Footballers' Association in England and the South African Professional Footballers Union are both integral parts of the trade union movement. In Scotland, players are part of the GMB. My own union represents football managers, and we even have the referees in the Prospect union.

In South Africa, football was always the game of the dispossessed, the townships, the black majority.

And that brings me to the other reason why the TUC is so proud to be here tonight.

We in Britain have a long record of fighting apartheid, hosting the ANC in exile, and welcoming Nelson Mandela when he was finally freed.

The TUC has strong links with the South African trade union movement, as strong today as they were in the dark days of white rule.

So we are especially pleased to see the way that the World Cup has thrown the spotlight on South Africa. On its challenges as well as its successes, and on the role that football can play in promoting jobs, education and solidarity.

And in that spirit of international solidarity, can I say good luck to all of the PFA members playing in the World Cup, yes, even the English ones, but especially to the South African team - or as our comrades in South Africa call them, Bafana, Bafana!