GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017
not take a lot of notice of, saying, “This is what we will do. This is a vision for
Britain”. This is not somebody who is putting forward a manifesto pledge just to
get a cross in a box. This is somebody who is actually preaching now what he
has been preaching for 30 years, no different as far as I am concerned.
As I said, they will reverse all the anti-trade union legislation, but look at all the
other stuff they will do and Manuel mentioned much of it. Despite the
crucifixion, if you like, that Laura Kuenssberg and people like that are trying to
portray, this guy is coming forward and saying about the £10 an hour. He will
introduce it. As I said yesterday, my union were the first ones to push that
forward. That is the policy not only of the TUC and the Labour Party, but it is
also the policy of this BCGM and I believe that we have a duty to enact our
policies, because if we do not enact the policies that we put forward in this
conference then what is the point in wasting the money coming along and
having a chat every two years? We have an obligation to put forward those
policies and to drive those policies forward and the first time in my memory
and, I have got to say, I have said it in many speeches that I have given,
Jeremy Corbyn is the leader that I have been waiting all my life for, 42 years in
the Labour Party. I have been waiting for a leader like Jeremy Corbyn to come
forward and do something for working people, because we have been
downtrodden for so long.
Don’t listen to all this Tory crap that we are getting about we can’t borrow
money, we can’t borrow money, because we are not allowed to leave future
generations in debt like happened before. Let me tell you, and I have told the
story before, so if you have heard it before I do not wish to bore you, you can
maybe have a sleep like I did for part of the night last night, we went to war
and, as Manuel rightly says, we got a Labour Government after it and that
Labour Government borrowed money, they invested, they were on the back of
two World Wars really. They came in, they built proper housing, they gave us a
welfare state that we are still in many ways proud of, the envy of the world.
They gave people the right to proper jobs. All these promises had to be paid
for. Do you know when that debt finished? That debt we finished paying in
2005, 60 years after the War finished, and never once, and there are quite a
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