We were addressed by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This article, overleaf or below summarises the speech, and offers some comments.
Rachel’s trip to the seaside
The Presidential Hustings @ GMB25
Congress 2025 was required to elect the Union’s president and vice-president. I have only been attending Congress for a few years and Barbara Plant has always chaired them. I am told that her predecessor, held the role for many years and was not required to defend her position in an election. This year, however, the election was contested. The vice-presidential position was also vacant and so Congress had hustings and elections for a new leadership team. For more see overleaf ...
GMB and a humane immigration policy
Yesterday, the GMB adopted a motion entitled, “For a fair and humane immigration policy”. This was proposed by my Branch and moved at Congress by me. The motion confirms its policy on fairness and dignity in immigration policy, calling for the repeal of Tory laws, action on ending the hostile environment, and the establishment of safe routes for refugees. It also sets out opposition to some of the proposals in “Restoring control over the immigration system”. The debate on the motion is embeded below.
I have created a document with the full text of the motion. My speech notes are available as a file and also below/overleaf. … …
On Infrastructure & industrial strategy
The CEC presented a special paper on Industrial Strategy and Infrastructure. It argues that the UK needs an industrial policy, that needs to be public sector led, with appropriate [public] ownership models and central planning. The rest of this article, overleaf, explores the themes in more detail. ...
Gary speaks
The General secretary, Gary Smith, presented the annual report, which excludes the detailed financial report which has its own agenda item later in the week. The following summary is based on notes I took at the time, which I have not checked on the video record. The aerticle, overleaf, talks about growth of membership, energy, the anti-politics of politics., and my article finishes with Gary's shopping list. ...
A better privacy policy
M20, from my branch, on making the privacy policy better was moved by and carried, annoyingly I didn’t make the point powerfully enough that the problem is that the GMB will not permit the use of email for contract purposes if members have opted out of email. The requirement for channel opt-outs precede the GDPR and depending on the privacy policy, an artefact required by the GDPR, means that email cannot be used for correspondence required by the membership contract such as dunning letters, or meeting convening notices, or even elections. The default communication mechanism is real mail. The debate is captured on youtube and starts here with my moving speech
This blog article is best read with [some of], the following documents, the final agenda document, GMB’s Congress page which contains all the documents and the video index is available as a playlist or as individual videos at the GMB’s youtube channel. This article has been back dated to about the time of occurrence. …
Bye Bye Brighton
And that’s it, I am on way home; at least the trains are running today.
On the video, the soundtrack of the red flag has been suppressed, is that quality or copyright? …
Fringes and solidarity
I enjoyed the fringes that I attended; all the ones I chose were activist led. Learning from such activism was reinforced by giving activists time at the rostrum, most importantly probably speakers from Amazon; the video stream starts here.
The fringe meeting I attended were the Apple solidarity fringe where I met the leadership of the recognition campaign; they’re impressive people. I hope we can bring similar success to London and also the fringe meeting hosted by the Migrant Democracy Project and the session was chaired by Lara Parizotto, who used to be in our branch. The speakers were from the voice of domestic workers, and the Bureau of investigative journalism. It also heard from Marcela Benedetti from migrants for labour, who spoke about the difficulties that Latinas had in making a home in the UK. The highlight for me was Emiliano Mellino from the Bureau of investigative journalism who presented, on his investigative project on the state of the living conditions of migrant workers working British farms, and finally I went to the Justice for Columbia campaign fringe. It was good to be reminded of the fact that in Columbia they have elected a left wing president, and established a peace agreement to bring the guerrilla movement into politics. They also announced their campaign of solidarity with ex-fighters; they are collecting money for a farm truck.
I say more overleaf ...
GMB23; the war in Ukraine
Congress then moved onto debate international issues, which this year, means the War in Ukraine. This was captured on the video stream, and I post the text of the main composite motion which was on the Ukraine war and a second motion on the arms industry and defence. I have clipped the video stream to include the whole debate. Both motions were opposed by a speaker from the floor, who unlike at Labour Party conference was heard and replied to with respect.
I didn’t speak in this debate, there follows below/overleaf the motions and the qualification. The clip above has the whole debate, including the CEC qualification speech together with the one speaker who opposed the two motions. … …
Immigration and Solidarity at GMB23
I was privileged to move M178 Immigration and Solidarity, which it would seem the video engineers did not record; they only turned it on in time to capture the second half of Lara Johnson’s excellent speech on M182 so they missed my & Joe’s speeches moving M178. I have posted the words of the two motions below/overleaf.
Our branch motion was designed to ensure that the Union and the Labour Party stood for an immigration policy based on decency and compassion, which are Starmer’s words from his ten leadership pledges an applied to all those seeking to come here, whether for work, to make a home or because they were fleeing war or political persecution.
I had been inspired by one of the fringe meetings, about Migrant’s Rights; a central piece of my speech in which I address part of the qualification, was,
If I had attended yesterday’s London Region Fringe, “Rights for all, organising and supporting migrant workers” before writing this motion, I would have focused less on the economics and more on the people but one of the purposes of the motion was to challenge the canard that migrants are an economic burden. It wasn’t true in 2016, and it isn’t true today. …
It is the view of the movers of this motion that the current immigration system which ties workers to jobs inhibits their ability to join unions and fight for their rights. Again the stories of the corruption and cruelty shared yesterday in the Organising Migrants session are an illustration of the truth of this. Low wages aren’t caused by migrants they are the result of weak unions and poor enforcement of minimum wage and health and safety laws.
The video link above, has Dean Gilligan of the CEC presenting the CEC Qualification.
Both motions were carried with qualification.
See below for the words of our motion and full notes of the speech I made. I have also posted the words of M182, Support and solidarity with Migrant Workers. … …