Trades Council fringe meeting

160 or so people is a fine turnout for a fringe meeting at the TUC, at which there are a total of 700 delegates and a lot of meetings to go to.



So hat's off to Manchester Trades Council for drawing such a crowd to the Friends' Meeting House to listen to an impressive array of speakers address the need to fight the cuts.



Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary kicked off the meeting, exposing the malevolent designs of our ConDem Coalition on our schools.



Billy Hayes of the CWU pledged opposition to Royal Mail privatisation (as you might expect) and predicted increasing opposition to cuts.



Mark Serwotka of PCS characteristically took a perspective across the movement as a whole, encouraging delegates to put pressure on union leaders to ensure that we coordinate action.



Matt Wrack of the FBU earned applause for referring to the Government's agenda as a "class agenda". He rightly posed the question of needing to build towards a General Strike.



UNISON was represented on the platform by Paul Holmes, NEC member for local government, who made a stirring appeal for working class leadership of the working class movement.



There is clearly a mood for action amongst a sizeable proportion of delegates at Congress. We now need to translate that into local activity and mobilisation around whatever we can get our leaders to organise.

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