GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

THE PRESIDENT: The next item on the agenda is Finances. One of the aspects of

a meeting of this kind is, I am afraid, that we have to consider the finances of

the organisation, but there it is, so I am going to call on the General Secretary

to give a brief report on the finances and then Wendy Cheung who is our

Finance Officer will follow that up.

THE GENERAL SECRETARY: Thanks, Ben. I think in one of the early papers we

sent out about this meeting I said I would give a prize for whoever could use

the most number of Shakespeare quotes in their speech, so I thought I would

start, because Shakespeare wrote at a time when the money economy was

beginning to take over and he said lots of things about it. His time was divided

by classes in the way ours is and he said: “Whiles I am a beggar, I will shout

and say there is no sin but to be rich and if I was rich, my virtue then shall be to

say there is no vice but beggary”. He also wrote about those who were

corrupted by money: “All that glisters is not gold. Often have you heard that

told. Many a man his life hath sold. But my outside to behold. Gilded tombs do

worms enfold”. He commented on the power of money to break down and melt

all meaningful social relationships between people: “Gold? Yellow, glittering,

precious gold? Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, wrong right,

base noble, old young, coward valiant. Why, this will lug your priests and

servants from your sides, pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:

This yellow slave will knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the

hoar leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title, knee and approbation

with senators on the bench”. (Laughter)

We live in a slightly capitalist society which has done all sorts of strange things

with money. It has put the finance markets in control of all of the economy.

Historically the trade union movements going back to the early days did not

invest in the money markets. Most of the trade unions refused to invest on the

Stock Exchange. They invested in real projects, creating real jobs in the real

economy. Early unions like the GMB invested in gas works and schools and

local authorities, for example. It is only relatively recently that unions started to

gamble on the casino and the GFTU, like many organisations, did that. It was

dependent on rental income at one point and then invested a lot of money on

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