GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

and in the workshops I will be bringing in some of those older histories of

Jewish workers in Britain who fought for the right to be part of the British

working class movement who were not a separate other, but actually organised

and took leading roles in strikes.

So I will be bringing some of those kind of histories into the workshop to think

about what we can learn today, because obviously if you think about France

with the Front National, you think about Trump, some of these arguments are

winning within parts of the working class movement and actually we have to be

really clear in saying the problem is not migrants who are coming over here,

actually it is bankers and corporations and that is a pretty clear argument, but it

one that has to be constantly won and fought for and migrants and new

immigrants are key within the trade union movement and pushing those

arguments and saying they have a right to be here really. That is what I am

looking at and in the workshop we will go through some of the actually really

proud tradition of antiracism within the British working class movement.

(Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Edda is doing some really significant work for the

GFTU on the history of the GFTU.

EDDA NICOLSON: Good afternoon. I am afraid I am a typical student, so I am more

at home with my nose in a book than in front of a group of people, so I will be

brief. I should probably start by saying a little bit about how I came to be here.

Many moons ago, much to the horror of my Conservative voting parents, I

became a rep for Unison and I have always been a tiny drop of red in a sea of

blue, unfortunately, with my family. Christmas is a bit strange, but we are not

allowed to talk politics at home. Through that I really became involved in trade

unionism. I found a niche for myself. I then spent some time travelling,

teaching English as a foreign language and then I came back to have my

children and when they were both quite little I thought about going back into

education, because I decided that I want to be a historian. I started off at the

Open University and I got my diploma in humanities and then I decided that I

really wanted to go to what we would call a red brick university, so not a real

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