GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

few from the older generation in this room, will you have heard your parents

saying, “Those buggers left us in debt”, nobody, because we got on with it. We

fought and we built for the future and that is exactly what is happening now and

I believe that is going to give people hope if we can get a Labour Government

in.

Labour is about making sure that we get people back into work, proper jobs. It

is not about what is happening now, this massaging of figures. When the

Government came out and said they are going to give apprenticeships, it is not

about upskilling the workforce in Britain, giving young people the opportunities

for the future. If you look at many of the companies that we represent, and it is

at the lower level, if you like, of the earnings capacity, this is about how you

reduce wages. This is a way of getting cheap labour. We have seen it with

Work Fair and all that where people were working for benefits. They have

come off the register because they were working in a plant, but it is not labour,

it is not jobs, it is not gainful employment. It is nothing that they can do for the

future. In fact what we are doing and what the Tories are doing is they are

building us up to fail in 20/30 years’ time, because the people who are

employed now on low pay are not going to have families and we are told by

economists (I am sure if Larry was here still he would tell us) that we need 2.2

children per family to get the economy going along. I am still to sort out how

you get 0.2 of a child, but that is what they say. People are not going to be

able to afford to have families, they are not going to be able to afford to have

mortgages, they are not going to buy new cars, they are not going to go on

holidays, and that, therefore, will help the economy in the future to contract.

We need a Labour Government, comrades, to move us forward. Jeremy

Corbyn and the Labour Party are not a threat to the defence of this nation or to

the economy. They are a threat to capitalism. They are a threat to those who

do not pay their taxes. They are a threat to in some ways the banks. Bringing

in a Robin Hood tax, everyone says, “Oh, we can’t tax the financial institutions”.

Didn’t we do that during the financial crash? Didn’t we have to pay our taxes to

bail them out? What do the Tories do? They lend them the money and then

they allow their rich friends to buy off our investment. Those banks should

195