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Trades councils consider break with Labour Party and more from the Trade Union Councils Conference in Cardiff

Delegates agree to initiate discussions on securing political representation for working class as well as criticising casualised, low-pay work and calling for a new drive for nationalised industry

Grassroots trade union members considered a break with Labour yesterday to boost working-class representation in politics.

Members of Britain’s trade council’s resolved “to initiate discussions on how best to secure the kind of political representation working-class people need, considering all options.”

Delegates expressed concern over the failure of Labour's leadership to abandon neoliberal policy and “the lack of a political voice representing the interests and needs of trade union members.”

Many delegates were concerned that such a debate would damage Labour’s role of defeating the Tories in the coming election — an objective agreed by all.

But the majority by a very small margin believed that such a discussion could only have a positive effect on Labour policy and would lay the foundations for a continuing debate through and beyond the election period.

 

Delegates at the Trade Union Councils Conference in Cardiff took a swing at Britain's “working conditions of the past” affecting many workers today such as low pay and zero-hours contracts.

Cardiff Trades Council member Ramon Correa received huge applause for his rallying call to action as he criticised the treatment of workers — particularly those in the fast food, social care, catering, cleaning and building industries, among many others.

He said: “We don’t just need a motion on the subject, we need to take the issue on… and begin to work to change their whole bloody system.”

 

Delegates called for nationalisation of the energy industry yesterday. 

The 31,000 deaths last year from cold related illnesses caused by high energy costs and poor insulation are the legacy of the “complete fiction of Thatcher’s ‘popular capitalism’,” he said.

“You can’t control what you don’t own,” said Steve Brown of Northumberland Trades Union Council, calling for the

“The concentration of power in so few hands means essentially it is the energy companies that dictate to government, not the other way round.”

The Conference unanimously endorsed the motion’s assertion that “the most effective way to control the energy industry is through nationalisation under democratic control.”

 

TUC deputy general secretary Paul Nowack demanded a “new economy and a commitment to public services and public ownership” yesterday. 

He said this would need “not just a change of government, but a change of political direction.”

He pointed out some changes in Labour policy — bedroom tax, youth job guarantee, keeping NHS public — as a result of TU lobbying, but said “there is still clearly a very long way to go to get Labour to fight on a progressive policies.”

 

A delegate from Derby hailed recent developments in Britain’s fastest growing political force — the People’s Assembly — yesterday. 

Bill Greenshields welcomed the close relationship between the People’s Assembly, its charter and the trade councils, and said that in “uniting and igniting the people, inspiring new activists and building an unstoppable movement, not just another campaign.”

Mr Greenshields said that we had to be as determined to inflict a decisive defeat on the ruling class as they were to inflict one on us.

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