Skip to main content
‘Let’s have no more ‘buts’ today’ – how the battle for the national minimum wage was won
The Star reprints here RODNEY BICKERSTAFFE’S landmark speech to TUC conference, moving a composite motion on low pay, on Wednesday September 3 1986

IT IS make your mind up time. It has been a long hard struggle, a long hard road, but here we are at last on the brink of an historic decision, not just for the working poor in our society but for the trade union movement as well,

I need no-one to talk to me about being patient just a little longer.
I need no-one to try to find another excuse for doing nothing for the eight million low-paid in our society. 

Don’t talk to me about justice, equality, fraternity and in the same breath deny hope to those who toil amid exploitation in Thatcher’s Britain.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
CWU leader Dave Ward
TUC Congress 2025 / 8 September 2025
8 September 2025

CWU leader DAVE WARD tells Ben Chacko a strategy to unite workers on class lines is needed – and sectoral collective bargaining must be at its heart

RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey
Features / 19 July 2025
19 July 2025

Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’

WLA launch speakers
Features / 28 June 2025
28 June 2025

Sisters came together last weekend for the landmark launch of a new women’s group. ROS SITWELL reports

Philipa Harvey speaks to conference
Features / 21 June 2025
21 June 2025

ROS SITWELL reports from the Morning Star conference on ‘Race, Sex and Class Liberation’ last weekend