GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

time to make violence against children illegal in the UK in all settings, including

the home.

So this conference calls on the UK Government to express the intention to draft

proposals, perhaps in the next Parliament, which will remove the defence of

“reasonable punishment” in criminal law. I have chosen as my quote the one

from Tony Benn who was a politician and friend of the trade union movement who

said: “There are two ways by which people are controlled. First of all, you frighten

them and, secondly, you demoralise them”. This BGCM calls for the GFTU to join

with other interested parties towards achieving better protection for children so

that they are neither frightened nor demoralised by assault from adults in the

name of discipline. Thank you. I will just put one other thing, because I love Tony

Benn’s quotes and my absolute favourite is: “Hope is the fuel of progress”. It

does not end there, but that is enough. Thank you very much. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Angela.

The motion was formally seconded

Motion 1 was CARRIED unanimously

THE PRESIDENT: You will notice that we have been joined by another person on

the top table here. He is getting to be a regular at GFTU conferences, I think it

is the third one now that he has been to, Larry Elliott, the Economics Editor at

the Guardian, but before Larry speaks I am just going to pass on to the General

Secretary.

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: Economics used to be a staple part of the trade

union education agenda and as we talked about history disappearing from that

agenda yesterday, so too economics has disappeared from a lot of the trade

union education programmes. As a consequence, we are less able to deal with

the gobbledegook that we hear spoken about the economy every day in the

media, so it is really good that we have still got people on our side who can put

the truth about what is happening in the economy from our perspective and

Larry has been doing that for many, many years now as the Economics Editor

of the Guardian. I hope if you have not seen his columns this contribution will

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