GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

decent world for your children. These giant figures, cloudy on the mountain

tops of history. How to bring them with a handshake into your kitchen, into the

pub, into the bar, into your factory, into your workshop, into your mine. They

can enter, they are friendly. You have spoken with them, but have not

recognised their voices. They have stood beside you and they stand beside

you now. Freedom is not different, it is not built on another shore with the

trumpets sounding from the further side. It is not a dream of fiery figures

cloudy on the hills of sunset, it is as close as love and work, closer than

breathing, born from generations of men and women no different from

yourselves, born from this generation, inherited, preserved or lost by you, you

that listen here”. Thank you. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: At the end of this session I am proposing that we have a short

break, but I would like to do the education session and then have a break. Is

that okay?

PROFESSOR KEITH GILDART: This Is my second BGCM and again I am humbled

to be amongst fellow trade unionists and it is a great honour to be at an event

like this. I am going to be very brief today, because I know that there are other

speakers who are going to be talking about aspects of Labour history and the

relationship. What I would like to say is that in the last two years since the last

BGCM the developing partnership between the GFTU and the University of

Wolverhampton has made great strides.

I mentioned at the last BGCM the tight connection that used to exist between

Labour historians, socialists academics and the trade union movement that

since the 1980s and 1990s had begun to fragment and had been through a

process of decline. The GFTU and Labour academics and intellectuals, from

whom you have been hearing and you are going to hear more from, have been

attempting to rebuild that relationship and, as we know with recent events, that

relationship with groups, individuals and organisations beyond the trade union

movement is more important than ever. I think I said in my presentation last

time that we were living in interesting times and that was prior to the election of

Donald Trump and prior to the seismic political shifts that we have witnessed

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