Nick with Mary Glindon at the launch of the Northern TUC Asbestos Support Group

The Northern TUC Asbestos Support Group was launched today by Nick Brown and North Tyneside MP Mary Glindon.

At their base in the Wallsend People’s Centre, North Tyneside, the Asbestos Support Group will provide advice and guidance for the growing number of workers in the region suffering from asbestos related illnesses such as mesothelioma, pleural plaques and asbestosis. 

The already high number of asbestos-poisoning victims in the North East is set to rise steeply over the next few years as the true scale of exposure is revealed, making groups like this one increasingly significant and relevant.

Nick Brown said: “This is an important initiative by the TUC. The support group offers practical help and advice to the victims of one of the great scandals of our age. Asbestosis is a remorseless killer. We should  stand up for the victims, conduct more medical research to prolong victims’ lives, safeguard future generations from exposure, and make the guilty employers and their insurers pay compensation.”

Nick has been a long standing advocate of asbestos victims, and has pushed to reverse a 2007 House of Lords judgement that denied justice to Pleural Plaques victims.

Over the next few months the Government will be deciding whether it will sanction the manufacturing of high-speed trains as part of the Intercity Express Programme. Japanese manufacturer Hitachi is now looking to put its faith in the North East for the future and has identified Newton Aycliffe as a preferred site to build rolling stock. 

It is predicted that 800 jobs will be created at the factory, and a further 7,000 positions across the supply chains throughout the region of which 70% will be in manufacturing.

Nick said: “This is an important strategic investment in our region. The project has great potential to be a secure and enduring part of the region’s employment base and I strongly support it.”

As part of its transformation programme, the Lib Dem led council has made 510 workers redundant in the hope of saving £169m over five years. Nick Brown said the council’s move had seen social workers’ job load soar. According to serious case reviews published in response to social worker failings in Newcastle, staff are overworked and unable to cope with the demands placed on them.

Nick said: “The Labour and trade union movement will have to fight to protect public services and show we are on the side of ordinary people. We are going to be confronted with a lot of shoddy, ill-founded spending cuts dressed up as efficiency savings.

“The impact of this can be seen by the work of Tories and the Liberal Democrats in local government. Newcastle City Council should think again about how to run an effective social service department.”

Nick speaking at last year's GMB-run Parliamentary lobby

Last Friday a Bill was passed through the House of Commons which would have the effect of overturning the 2007 Law Lords decision to deny compensation for pleural plaques sufferers. To become law, the Bill must now pass through the House of Lords before the middle of November. This is by no means the battle won, but last Friday’s vote was a victory and a step forward.

Nick Brown has welcomed the Bill’s progress. Nick said: “I made clear in my submission to the Ministry of Justice consultation last year that this was a regional issue, and a class issue, that overwhelmingly affects manual workers and their families in communities like our own. People with pleural plaques have written to me to tell me about the extra pain that is caused by each month that goes by without this being sorted out. I am aware of the need to get justice for victims and their families as soon as is possible.”

Nick speaks further about the background to the Bill in this article in last Friday’s Chronicle, while the Bill’s sponsor Andrew Dismore MP pays tribute to Nick’s work on the campaign in this article from last Thursday.

Nick at a Community and GMB-run rally for workers from the Corus Steel plant in Redcar

This week, at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Nick spoke at two fringe events.  At the Association of North East Councils meeting Nick and the rest of the panel discussed the push to grow our region’s economy around green energy and sustainable technologies. Later in the week Nick joined the Community Union, the G.M.B. and others to help secure a future for the workers at the Corus steel plant in Teesside.

Both events reflected an emerging choice facing the UK. The Labour Government is determined to step in to protect jobs during the economic downturn, while still investing in future green industries. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat proposals to cut investment immediately would make the recession deeper and the recovery longer, while threatening the public services people need.

The Labour Government has changed this country for the better over the past 12 years. In his speech in Brighton, the Prime Minister listed these achievements. From the winter fuel allowance, the creation of Sure Start and the shortest hospital waiting times in history, to the cancelling of overseas debt and the first ever Climate Change Act, there are real achievements of which we can be proud.

...and with Colombian agricultural union leader Aidee Moreno at an event organised by Justice for Colombia

The Government is now setting out the choices that will continue to improve Britain for the future. Last week saw new pledges on free childcare for under-2s; an end to charges for parking at hospitals; quicker results for cancer tests; free care at home for elderly people who need it most; and a People’s Bank organised through the Post Office network. All these changes will be underpinned by a plan to set out the Government’s approach to debt reduction in law.

Labour’s proposal to bring down the national debt over time will protect jobs now while continuing to offer improvements to the public services people depend on. There are real choices to be made here and, as Gordon said to the conference, it’s not about us, it’s about you.

Tom’s leadership of the Union in the North East of England set in train a series of events that have an important impact on the public life of our region today. Tom took forward pioneering cases in the field of industrial injuries and in particular for the victims of industrial deafness, vibration white finger and asbestos-related diseases. He also, together with John Edmonds, negotiated the pioneering industry agreement with British Nuclear Fuels, an agreement that still stands the test of time today.

Tom was a shrewd and careful negotiator. His well-thought through and reflective approach to industrial relations was well-judged for the times and did a great deal to take the sting out of the worst effects of Thatcherism on the economy of the North East of England. Along with the then Regional Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union Joe Mills, Tom was a constructive and stabilising influence on the regional Labour Party.

He had the strength of character and sense of purpose not to compromise with the Trotskyite hard left who were doing their best to destroy the Labour Party in the 1980s. He also supported and encouraged younger people in the Union and in politics; myself, Alan Donnelly, Doug Henderson, and later Kevan Jones and Dari Taylor, all owe a debt of gratitude to Tom and the GMB for the support that we have been given over the years for the political causes we have taken up.

Tom saw very clearly the importance of the link between the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party, and understood probably better than anyone else I know the responsibilities placed on everyone involved. Tom had a tremendous affection for the North East, for its football, for its countryside, and for its working people. His substantial achievements are a fitting and enduring legacy.

100 yrs ago this year, in August 1907, the general workers in Belfast went on strike

The strike wasn’t specific to a particular industry, nor, for once, was it wholly sectarian in nature

The UK Liberal Govt met the strikers, peaceful pickets, with troops, rifles and fixed bayonets

The peaceful pickets became less peaceful, and threw stones and bottles at the soldiers

A month previously, two new Members of Parliament had been elected for Jarrow and, a fortnight later, Colne Valley

It was Jarrow’s Peter Curran who led a ferocious parliamentary onslaught on the use of armed troops against striking workers, and whose Parliamentary activity and leadership brought about an enduring change in public attitudes and the attitudes of parliamentarians to the responses to peaceful industrial disputes

It is the memory of a great Parliamentarian, and a great trade Union leader, that we are celebrating today

In his Parliamentary work, Peter Curran was disciplined and persistent

He had the strength of character, and determination to take on difficult, not always glamorous, organisational tasks, and to see them through to an effective conclusion 

And he was not to be the last Member of Parliament for Jarrow about whom that could be said

In researching the events of the 4^th July 1907, I found much that I expected, and almost as much that I did not

In spite of coming from a very large Irish family, Peter Curran did not get the bulk of the Tyneside Irish vote in the 1907 election

It was an important vote – the Jarrow party still fights in green

When I first fought Newcastle East, just the other side of the river, the party colours were green, red and white

Green for the ground that was fought for

Red for the blood that was spilt

And white for purity of the cause

Needless to say we had to change our colours

It was also made very clear to me that the green was emerald green 

What seems to have happened is that the Irish Nationalist Party – the constitutional Irish National Party of the day – endorsed Sir Charles Mark Palmer, the long-serving Liberal MP 

Palmer was the Palmer of Palmer’s Yard. He was responsible for much of the ship-building enterprises growing up on the south of the river Tyne, and indeed for much of Jarrow town itself

He had defeated Peter Curran at the 1906 election, but Curran continued to work the seat, having shrewdly noted that Palmer was 85 yrs old and no doubt calculating that he, Curran, could fight the seat next time, or that there might be a by-election, as indeed there was, when Palmer died the following year

I thought I’d find that the shipyard workers of Jarrow carried Peter Curran to office in the by-election, but this isn’t what happened either

The shipyard workers vote split between the Irish Nationalist Party with Tyneside Irish Shipyard workers voting for the Constitutional Irish National Cause.

The Nationalist Candidate was himself a shipyard worker

The traders in Jarrow, and the freeholders in South Shields who had votes in Jarrow in those days, voted Unionist

It was the mining community of West Bouldon and Bouldon Colliery that voted solidly for the Labour candidate – the other votes split four ways and Peter Curran won, thus becoming the first Labour MP for the North East of England

I thought I would find that in the election campaign he emphasised his Labour credentials, as he would have had every right to do

In fact he fought the campaign more as a trade unionist than as a political activist, emphasising his 20 yrs as a full time Trade Union official with the Union that he, Will Thorne and others, helped to found.This was the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers

There is even an irony here – Peter Curran began his working career in a Steelworks’ Blacksmiths Shop, first by assisting the hammer driver, and then doing the job himself

A generation later this is something he couldn’t have done because he would have been in the wrong union

Peter Curran is the Curran in the court of appeal case Curran vs Straleven in 1891

The case overturns Curran’s earlier conviction and fine for intimidation which was imposed on him during an industrial dispute at Plymouth 

He was one of the first National Leaders of our Union in the days when Labour leaders like Curran, Clynes and Thorne were able to lead Trade Unions and serve in Parliament as well

They saw no contradiction in this and indeed there wasn’t 

Nowadays its hard to imagine anyone leaving the Fabian Society, except perhaps because of the annual fee

Peter Curran left the Fabian Society because he was against the war. The Boer War.

He was clearly a strong-willed man with drive, courage and by all accounts having an extrovert good nature 

He was a born leader and political organiser.

He died in 1910, and it’s a measure of how much he was admired that thousands of people turned out for his burial at Leytonstone Roman Catholic Cemetary

A gas-worker’s union man to the very last, the funeral procession was led by the Stepney Gas-worker’s brass band.

The Labour Party is essentially made up of four elements. The first is our history, our philosophical background, the idealism and sense of purpose – “for the many not the few”. Secondly, there is the Party’s ability to provide candidates for public office, for Parliament, the European Parliament, Local Government, and School Governors. Thirdly, there’s our individual membership, people who join the local Labour Party in the area where they live. Fourthly, other membership-based organisations affiliate to the Labour Party because they broadly share its aims and objectives. Among the Labour Party’s affiliates are organisations like the Fabian Society, the Co-operative Party, and major trade unions like the GMB, Amicus, T&G, and Unison.

This federal structure is rooted in the early origins of the Labour Party and goes to the very heart of what we’re about. The link with the unions is a great strength for the Labour Party and our opponents have always hated it.

It has therefore come as something as a surprise to myself and to many other Labour MPs to find that Sir Hayden Phillips is working on a recommendation that would prevent trade unions from funding the Labour Party. There is widespread support for tighter expenditure caps at election time and in the run-up to elections. What is objected to by almost everybody in the Labour Party is Sir Hayden Phillips’ proposal for a cap on income which in practice would only impact on the Labour Party, because it would be enforced against trade unions – whose accounts are open and published – but not easily enforced against wealthy individuals who wish to give money to the Conservative Party.

Trade union funds are the sum total of individual trade unionists membership dues including, where people choose to pay it, the political levy. The money that trade unions pay to the Labour Party represents a small, relatively modest contribution from hundreds of thousands of individual trade unionists. It is not the equivalent of a single large payment from a wealthy individual and should not be treated as such.

It is expenditure limits that are important. It is very wrong for Britain’s conservative establishment to use an inquiry into the funding of political parties to try to break the Labour Party-trade union link, and collapse the Labour Party financially. Trade union donations to the Labour Party are transparent and accounted for. They are not the bit of the system that needs reforming.