GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

itself in a different form. It struck me that this perfectly describes racism. It is

never eradicated, it merely waits for the right preconditions and circumstances

before re-emerging to proliferate and spread its toxicity across society.

If we within our unions, if we within our federations do not tackle this, we are in

a serious situation, because I remember the days when every day I walked on

to the pitch people would use the ‘N’ word or some form of that. Our young

black and BME players, our young black and BME people will not tolerate that.

They are far more radical in their responses. It is up to us to address it. If we

cannot eliminate it, we must manage and control it through a collective

intolerance of any kind of racist behaviour in society.

Over the 2 ½ days of conference we have witnessed some excellent motions

and contributions from our delegates and guest speakers. We have listened to

a powerful account of the ongoing oppression of the Kurdish people in Turkey

from Osman, underpinned by Brother Manuel Cortes’s emotional feedback on

his own delegation’s experiences in Turkey. We heard about Edda’s ongoing

project on the history of the GFTU and why the chronicling and preservation of

our history is so important in shaping and maintaining our aims and ideals.

Larry Elliot who also attended conference in 2015 and 2017 provided his usual

concise and clear summary of the economic situation, stimulating lively debate

and delegate interaction. Yesterday’s section on young people, isn’t that a

constant thread in all our work, all our submissions, young people and the

youth service with contributions from Cat Smith, Matteo of Shout Out,

concluding with Geoff Thompson’s call to action for the establishment of social

coaches to address youth engagement really resonated with some of the

observations and some of the comments that have been presented right

throughout this conference.

Although we have been enthused and inspired by the content and the quality

of the conference, there can be a tendency once it is over to go back to our day

jobs. Over the term of my presidency and in conversation with the incoming

Vice President, we want to work backwards from the next BGCM in 2021 with

specific aims and objectives in which we aim to support the Executive in

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