GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

here nor there, it is not really the union’s business, but if we regard ourselves

as part of the labour movement, i.e. having a political dimension, then I would

argue that supporting the arts should be a central part of what trade unions do

and the reason I would say that is because the arts are the most effective tool

for expressing ideas that human beings have ever devised. I am not talking

here about the arts meaning middle class elite arts like opera, classical theatre,

ballet, I am talking about the arts and media as tools for expressing ideas. I am

talking really about propaganda. The forces of capital well understand, have

always understood, the right wing forces have always understood the power of

propaganda. Hitler in Mein Kampf was talking about the power of propaganda

15 years before he ever got anywhere near power. They know the power of

propaganda in changing hearts and minds and if trade unions have that

political function as part of their function then the expressing of ideas and the

changing of hearts and minds has to be not an add-on, not something that we

do just to provide a service to people, but it needs to be something at the core

of what we do, because, as I say, these tools of the arts and media are the

most powerful way of conveying ideas that human beings have ever devised.

They are far more powerful than a pamphlet or a dissertation or an essay. The

arts – theatre, music, the visual arts – really connect with people, both

emotionally and intellectually and that is why they are so powerful.

I run a thing called the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival at Tolpuddle every year

and a couple of years ago we showed a film made by an activist in Liverpool

about the power of the book the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. How many

people have read the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist in the room? So

almost everyone here has read the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. All the

people in this film, lots of sort of leftie celebrities, were commenting on how

powerful the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist had been in forming their ideas

of what a just society could and should be. That is a novel. It is not a

dissertation, it is not a nonfiction book, it is a novel and, as such, that is why it

was of powerful, because it affects people by both their emotions of

empathising with the main characters and the decorators I=.n the story and

empathising with them, but it also expresses very clearly political and economic

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