GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

and the TUC. Remarkably, the recovery was incredible, looking back. It

probably did not feel like it to the General Secretary at the time, but in the

middle of the war in 1943 we affiliated to the Labour Party, we had rejoined the

TUC, it took rather longer with the GFTU, and the union was stable again and

membership grew like mad during the war years and during the 1950s. So we

came back into the GFTU fold in the early 1990s and we have been very

pleased to be here ever since. That is the kind of story about how the union

goes up and down.

At the moment we are dealing with digital technologies, we are dealing with the

implications of streaming, we are dealing with getting musicians paid properly

and that is everything that is about us. We have got a campaign, it is the most

popular campaign we have ever had among our members and we call it Work

not Play and this is because so many times our members are asked to play for

no fee. Charities are the worst offenders. “Come and play for this wonderful

charity. You don’t want paying, do you?” it is a bit like what Theresa was

saying. Everybody else is getting paid, the lawyers are getting paid, the bar

staff are getting paid, the people that provide the toilet facilities are getting paid,

but they do not want the artists to be paid and we are saying that is wrong.

They are very generous, our members, but the thing they have to do is offer

them the fee first and see if they will donate it to the charity and they do a lot of

the time. I have had so many rows with organisers of charities. One of the

biggest ones was a law firm called Mishcon de Reya. I do not know if anybody

knows that, it is a very posh city firm. They were administering the Princess

Diana Trust. They were doing lots of things and they put a CD together to play

for it and one of our orchestras was asked to do this and they were booked into

Abbey Road Studios, EMI studios, for something like three sessions and they

were not offering them any money. I was talking to this lawyer and I said, “You

must be joking”. He said, “Are you telling me that you will not support this

wonderful charity?” I said, “How much are you getting paid?” He said, “Oh

well, a lot of this will be pro bono”. They got paid. We do dig in and we tell our

members, “If you are embarrassed”, because it is very embarrassing to be put

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