We are many – they are few’

February 12 2016

We are many, they are few. We can beat this Government, beat this Bill, and create a fair society for everybody,” was the rousing end to a fighting speech from CWU senior deputy GS Tony Kearns at last night’s high-profile Midlands Rally Against the Trade Union Bill in Nuneaton.

Appearing on the platform alongside Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson, TUC Midlands secretary Lee Barron and CWU Midlands secretary Kate Hudson, our SDGS opened with an attack on yesterday’s decision by Government Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to impose the new contract on junior doctors as “outrageous”.

Tony praised the dedication of the young doctor who had cared for his young son when he had suffered meningitis and said: “I would always trust a junior doctor – not Jeremy Hunt.
“We need to support them 100 per cent.”

He went on to talk about rising poverty, the real-term decline in workers’ wages and explain how this was directly related to increasing company profits and tax avoidance by top companies.

“It’s been a long-term transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top,” said Tony and added: “The Tories are attacking unions because it’s unions who stand up to all this.

“Every gain that working people have made has been because of trade unions – paid holidays, sick pay, the eight-hour or 7.5-hour working day, abolition of child labour all came about because people got together in unions and made demands.”

Turning to the Labour Party, Tony quoted John Smith, who led the party from 1992 for just two years until his sudden death in 1994.

Reminding the audience that John Smith had promised an incoming Labour government would legislate for full rights for all workers – whether temporary, permanent, part time or full time – from day one of their employment, Tony pointed out that these had traditionally been mainstream Labour Party policies.

“Labour will win again when they can say to workers: We’re on your side’, he pointed out, and then urged the whole movement to unite with a “common agenda” and “insert trade union values into wider society,” before reaching his memorable conclusion.

Tom Watson told the audience that the two reasons for the campaign were to celebrate the work and the achievements of trade unions and to resist and oppose the Trade Union Bill, which he described as “a politically motivated attack on working people and on the Labour Party.

“This is the most illiberal, unfair, partisan and plain nasty piece of legislation in my lifetime,” he said, adding: “The Tories don’t want a vibrant participative democracy.”

As well as the attacks on union rights, the Government is also attacking the historic links between the Labour Party and the union movement, and is hitting at the ability of the political opposition to fund its activities and organisation.

And expressing his extreme concern at these developments, Tom warned that it seems that “the curtains are closing on our democracy.”

But, working people have, he said, “achieved great things when they stand together in solidarity.
“The labour movement is over a century old and millions deep and with ties too strong for Cameronto break,” he insisted.

Lee Barron reminded people that the union movement had won against far more difficult odds in the past, overcoming the criminalisation of trade unionism during Victorian times, the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and the imprisonment of strikers.

“We’re still here,” he said, adding: “When working people see injustice they don’t stand for it. We’re the ones making the case for working people – in workplaces and in the communities. If we weren’t here today, we’d be created tomorrow.
Let’s grow stronger and bigger together.”

In other contributions, Trudy Allen from the PCS union spoke of how the attacks on check-off and facility time have had the effect of galvanising activists to recruit more members, while Kate Phillips from NUT explained why she had become a teachers’ union rep, while CWU Midlands divisional rep Paul Kennedy urged campaigners to take on board the political as well as the industrial aspects of the Government’s attacks.

Summing up the day, Kate Hudson said: “It’s been a great day up here in the Midlands – some fantastic activities from our CWU members and also it’s been brilliant to make new friends and contacts with members of other unions in the region.
“Many thanks to all our speakers at the meeting and also thanks and appreciation to every single trade unionist who has participated today.
“Unity is our strength. The power of what we can do when we come together is what makes the difference, it’s what brings change.”