Brendan Barber's speech to Congress 2009
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date: 14 September 2009
embargo: 10.30am Monday 14 September 2009
Check against delivery - embargo 10:30 Monday Sep 14
President, Congress, Welcome to Liverpool.
A great industrial city, a maritime city, a city rightly celebrating the release a few days ago of the wrongly imprisoned Michael Shields, and above all a union city.
I don't know whether this is trade unionism coming home, but this is certainly quite a lot of the General Council coming home. For the last few years we've met in Brighton, but it's right to have moved this year.
That's because this Congress needs to be different. For the past few years we have taken quite a few things for granted.
High employment. Strong growth. Increased public spending. A Labour government that we sometimes applauded - and sometimes drove us to frustration. Progress on key union campaigns. Disappointment on others.
Even my speech to Congress had many common themes. Reminding us not to forget our successes as we set out our new goals. Building our membership, the only real basis for our influence with government and employers. Saluting the real strength of our movement - our activists and reps.
And let's make sure the disgusting anti-democratic practice of blacklisting is outlawed once and for all, and today let us offer our solidarity to those construction workers who suffered because of the shameful activities of Ian Kerr and all those companies who disgracefully used his services.
Congress, all those themes are still just as important. But what we must do this year is come to term with big changes. Because we are suffering the effects of the biggest financial crash since the 1920s. The resulting recession has been as deep as any we remember.
When the crash first hit, there was much talk of a classless recession. But each month since makes clearer that while the causes are different, it's the same people paying the highest price.
Manufacturing workers hit hard. Vulnerable workers hit the hardest.The same regions and cities that suffered last time hit yet again.Ordinary bank workers affected badly, while those at the top - those who caused this crisis - now back at the bonus trough.
And it's our young people, the future of our country, who are least to blame and suffering the most. We're all familiar with the statistics.Almost one in five young people without work; 140,000 under-25s long-term unemployed. But behind the facts and figures lies a human tragedy of talents wasted, horizons diminished, aspirations stubbed out.
Congress, whether young or old, joblessness is a devastating experience. Days become weeks, weeks become months, sometimes months become years - and all the while confidence is being sapped, self-esteem eroded, hope replaced by despair. Britain cannot afford to write off another generation to mass unemployment.
And that's why I am so horrified when I hear the Conservatives talk of public expenditure cuts which would turn any progress towards economic recovery into a nosedive back into recession. On this - the biggest issue of economic policy today, which will determine our fortunes for years to come - they are profoundly on the wrong side of history and totally out of step with thinking in every other major economy.
Here in this city which was so scarred by the riots of the 1980s, let us remember the crippling economic and social costs of the Tory recessions, and let us resolve: never, ever, again.
That's why we welcome the government's active policies to stimulate the economy and support the hundreds of thousands of jobs that would otherwise have been lost. That's why we welcome the Future Jobs Fund and the jobs guarantee for young people. Indeed we want these measures to go further.
And my hope for the Prime Minister's speech tomorrow is that we will hear even more about help for those who need it most.
There's beginning to be talk of recovery, but we need to be careful. Too many people want to avoid facing up to the lessons of the crash. This was no ordinary slow-down, but a financial meltdown. It was made in bank boardrooms. It happened because politicians bought the line that finance should be king and deregulation the answer to every problem. Activities now so well described by Adair Turner as 'socially useless' were seen as economically essential.
Set finance free we were told. Have a bonfire of regulations. Let the super-rich get even richer as it will trickle down to the rest of us - and don't annoy them by asking them to pay much tax. Manufacturing is old fashioned. Let the City rule. Greed is good. These were the watchwords. And those who still preach that creed want us to forget the crash and tell us the economy is now in recovery, so they can re-engage the free-market autopilot.
But the economy has fallen off a cliff. Green shoots mean little when thousands of people a day are joining the dole queue. Rising share prices count for little when a million and more young people can't find work. And bumper bonuses are an obscene joke when it was our money that rescued the banks, and it is our public services that are now being told they will have to face the consequences.
Congress, it's only when unemployment starts coming down, only when we create decent jobs that pay decent wages, and only when vital public services are safe from cuts, that we'll be able to talk about a real recovery.
And whatever the stats say, the bad economic news is not over. Banks are still not lending as much as they should, but rebuilding their balance sheets. Businesses are not investing. Consumers are slow to spend.
That's why public spending and state intervention has had to fill the gap. This government did well to stop the threat of financial catastrophe. If banks had collapsed we would not have recession, but an economic nuclear winter. Ministers were right to step up public spending. The Bank of England has been right to pump liquidity into the system through quantitative easing. Make no mistake - things may be bad, but without that action they would be very much worse.
Those who now talk of recovery are not saying how well all this intervention has worked. Quite the opposite. They want to pretend the financial crisis was no more than a little local difficulty. And now it can be back to business as usual. Bonuses as usual.
Instead they say the public sector deficit is the big problem. We have to take that argument head on. A public sector deficit is inevitable in a recession. It's a symptom - not a cause.
A symptom not just of a reduced tax take, not just of an increased benefits spend, but also of the £1.3 trillion of taxpayer money now propping up the banks. The biggest case of market failure in our history. But try and cut a deficit during a recession and you just make it worse.
But we can't accuse others of not realising the world has changed, if we don't. Yes, trying to close the deficit now will make it worse. But in the medium and long term, it must start to come down. And that is going to mean some hard choices.
That is not a debate that unions can ignore - because it is going to be the big national debate of the next election and next parliament.
And there's a simple issue at stake: it's fairness. Just as young people should not pay the price for the recession, nor should those who depend on vital public services foot the bill for reducing the deficit. All that extra investment of the last 12 years in our schools and hospitals must not now be allowed to go to waste - and nor should our vital public services face the disastrous prospect of yet more privatisation and fragmentation.
So we will need to very clear about how we are going to cut our national debt. Tax increases are inevitable. The question is who will pay them: poor and average earners, or the best off? Fairness surely demands the latter.
The TUC has led the debate in exposing how the super-rich and big companies dodge their taxes. Closing those loop-holes must be the start. And while we welcome the higher taxes on those earning more than £150,000 in the budget, there's much more to do to make the tax system fair.
Of course, spending will also come under scrutiny. If times are tough, why are we spending massively more each year on pensions tax relief for higher rate taxpayers than we are on public sector pensions? If times are tough, then why are we splashing out on ID cards that people don't want and experts say won't work? And if times are tough, and our defence needs are now profoundly different in a new terrorism-threatened, post cold war world then why are we planning a new generation of nuclear weapons? Spending countless billions on new nukes when we are failing to achieve our targets on child poverty is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Congress, there has never been a time when the energy, and the determination of our movement has been more needed. Campaigning, like we did in the unprecedented Put People First coalition that we brought together in the run up to the London G20 Summit making the case for Jobs, Justice and Climate.
Fighting to defend decent pensions, including for six million public service workers who reached an honourable deal only four years ago that both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems now want to rip up.
Delivering that fairer deal for agency workers promised by the European Directive. Come on Gordon let's see that legislation introduced now.
And delivering solidarity to brothers and sisters around the world fighting their own battles to deliver basic decency and justice for working people.
Since our last Congress we've received the grim news of even more brutal attacks on good trade union colleagues in Colombia - even assassinations. They still need our help.
Our President Sheila and I talked at first hand only a couple of weeks ago in Harare with our Zimbabwean colleagues who, with a rare steadfast courage are striving to build a new Zimbabwe out of the utter devastation and waste of the Mugabe years. They still need our help. And I talked in Cuba with the wives and families of the Miami 5 of their continuing struggle for basic justice. They still need our help too.
In Havana I had the special pleasure of attending the May Day celebrations this year marking the 50th Anniversary of the revolution and the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the CTC - and it's a real pleasure to have Salvador and Raymundo with us this week. Let me tell you, in Havana on May Day they really know how to throw a party.
Solidarity is what this movement is about all around the world. And we are going to need to maintain solidarity and trade union cohesion here at home over this next period too whatever happens in the next General Election.
Congress, this year we lost someone who had solidarity coursing through his veins. He was born 96 years ago, just down the river from here. He spilled blood fighting fascism in Spain. He was an outstanding champion of workers and of pensioners. And, as an activist in Liverpool during the Great Depression, he knew what hard times meant for working people. His name, of course, was Jack Jones.
He was an inspiration to us all, a true colossus of the labour movement, and we will never forget him. And at this time of great uncertainty, in the midst of our economic crisis, let us resolve to fight for the causes that Jack did so much to advance.
Let us speak up for decent jobs, workers' rights and public services. Let us speak out against greed, exploitation and discrimination. And let us ensure that when this storm subsides, Britain emerges a better, fairer, more equal place.
Thank you.
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