Barber – Warwick provides joint Labour-union programme for third term
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has addressed the Trades Union Congress annual conference in Brighton this afternoon, ahead of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech to delegates, arguing that the Warwick agreement has put the unions more “at ease” with Labour than at any time in recent years.
“When I addressed Labour’s National Policy Forum earlier this year, I said what was missing from Labour’s second term was any sense of a comprehensive programme for the workplace, to deliver our vision beyond full employment to quality employment for all”, the general secretary stated.
He argued that there was a joint programme for the first term, and argued that the “Warwick agreement” – a 56-point plan agreed at the National Policy Forum – represents the basis of a programme for the third term.
“Warwick has given us a real sense of a programme on which we can work together with this government”, Mr Barber insisted, adding, “I think that the programme put together in Warwick has made us more at ease with each other than for some time.”
Like TUC president Roger Lyons, who addressed delegates on Monday morning, Mr Barber warned that the alternative to a Labour government is a Conservative government.
“I have nightmares about just how bad things could be again – when I hear speeches from the opposition attacking basic rights at work and when they label tolerance and opposition to discrimination as ‘political correctness gone mad'”, he warned, expressing alarm at the return of right-winger John Redwood to the Conservative front bench last week.
Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Barber outlined the unions’ achievements for the last year, and its priorities for the coming years. He emphasised the continuing struggle for pensions, against long hours (he described the UK opt-out from the Working Time Directive as “shameful”) and to promote the unions’ learning role.
