Newham's Wonderful Women

This is a speech by Newham (born and bred) Councillor, Ellie Robinson, at the Full Council meeting last Monday.

It was a marvelous speech and it was a shame that at that meeting we voted to change our Constitution so that Council meetings in the future can be filmed. Shame Ellie missed out on this.

"I am going to talk about Newham’s wonderful women.

We have a proud history of fabulous women here.  Yesterday was the birthday of Emmeline Pankhurst, born on the 14th July 1858, who founded the women’s franchise league which fought to allow married women a vote in local elections.

She later helped found the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) whose members were the first to be called the 'suffragettes'.  Emmeline's daughters Christabel and Sylvia followed in their mum’s footsteps and when the Union’s headquarters moved to London, Sylvia Pankhurst moved into the Canning Town Public Hall, now the home of Community Links on the Barking Road.  The first London branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union was formed right there. 

Today, we all continue to come across fabulous women everyday - helping to run our schools, our businesses, our voluntary organisations, and our health services, and, of course our council services. 

At the Mayor’s Town Show over the weekend, there were some fantastic women and girls performing, educating, organising, inspiring throughout the day.  On Saturday I went to the Forest Gate Women’s Institute food festival which is a fabulous family-friendly event organised by a great group who are currently campaigning against female genital mutilation. 

Last Friday, I was very honoured to spend some time with our social workers.  The woman who let me shadow her in the morning works all hours of the day, with a smile and with incredible patience, changing families’ lives in Newham.  At the end of the day I was privileged to meet with some of our care leavers and their key workers.  One care leaver spoke confidently about our children in care council and how it had given her confidence and ambition and new skills while bouncing her new born, much loved, daughter on her lap.  When I asked the key worker about the best part of her job she told me, without hesitation how proud she had been to be her birthing partner.

There are fabulous women doing worthwhile things all around us, yet this government clearly does not respect the contribution of women.  Women’s unemployment has risen to a 25 year high whilst men’s has decreased.  The Government’s attack on welfare and plans for growth are frankly leaving women behind. 

In addition, women are still underrepresented at the highest levels. 

· UK women have slipped from 33rd to 57th place since 2001 in the international power rankings

· 22% of MPs are women

· withinthe legal system, only 14% of the senior judiciary are women.

· 11% of UK bank CEOs are women

· 5% of Editors of national daily newspapers are women

This is made worse by there being a real lack of black women, Asian women, working class women, disabled women and lesbian, bisexual and transgender women in positions of power and influence. 

Ensuring that women are equally represented ensures that issues which affect half the population are understood and debated.  Last month, the very awesome Texas State Senator, Wendy Davis electrified the pro-choice movement with her 11-hour filibuster.  Facing down condescension and sexism, she stood and spoke for 11 hours to ensure the rigid anti-abortion bill would not go through.

We all know that important decisions affecting us all, men and women, are better made when different experiences and perspectives are heard.  Not having women at the table is huge waste of talent and potential which perpetuates itself, reproducing a model image of what leadership looks like, constraining and  stifling the aspirations of future generations. 

100 years ago this year Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself under the King's horse as a protest at the government's continued failure to grant women the right to vote.  100 years on, we can all vote but there is a long way to go.

Emmeline Pankhurst said of the Suffragettes, ‘We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.’  Emmeline broke the law so that I and others could help make it. 

Let us commit to ensure that, in Newham, in all that we plan and all that we deliver, ALL the women and girls in our care, in our schools, in our workforce, in our community have the support and the opportunity to be the best that we can be.”

Hat tip picture to Col Roi and Museum of London. 

Newham Council Motion On Campaign Against Blacklisting

This is the speech I made last night at Newham Council meeting seconding the motion here item 17 proposed by Councillor Unmesh Desai.

"A few weeks ago, like many of you here, I went to the funeral of former trade union activist and Labour Councillor, Vic Turner.

At the funeral I bumped into my TUC health and safety tutor, a former construction worker called Dave Smith. Dave taught me about 10-15 years ago in North East London College. He was a great tutor who also spoke of his past life as an engineer and carpenter on building sites.

When I asked him why he stopped working on sites, he told me that he had no choice. He just stopped getting any work on building sites even as a sub-contractor. He retrained as a carpenter but still could not find any long term work. He suspected that it was to do with his trade union activities and work as a safety rep for UCATT, the construction trade union, but he could not prove anything. His income went down from £36k per year to £12k per year. In 10 years he estimated he lost £175k in wages.

As Dave put it recently in the Guardian. He was a qualified engineer during the longest ever building boom in this country yet his children relied on milk tokens.Dave had a family to support so he had no choice but to retrain as a part time teacher to try and earn a living for them.

In 2009 the Information Commissioners Office finally raided the HQ of a company called "The Consulting Association" and amongst thousands of others, they found a 36 page secret report on Dave, including his national insurance number, photographs, his car and even the place where his brother worked, as well as crude smears. Much of the information was held in card indexes with information clipped from newspapers and passed to employers who would check against potential recruits.

Dave and many others on the list are taking their case to the High court for compensation and Justice.

So far Consulting Association has been fined a miserly £5k for helping to destroy so many people’s lives, while the companies and senior executives who supplied and used this unlawful information have not suffered at all. They admit to wrong doing but refuse to pay any compensation.

Council, we don’t want McCarthyism in this Country. How would any of us here tonight, or our  partners or children, like to face a lifetime of unemployment, because they asked their employer for a health and safety risk assessment or protective clothing?

Like many members I have relatives who work in construction and even in North Sea rigs. This is dangerous work and we want stroppy union reps challenging employers and doing their best to make things safe.

The criminal and civil law has proved to be totally unable so far to protect workers from such victimisation. The only things that these big publicly listed construction companies understand is their pockets. We need to make it crystal clear that not only is blacklisting wrong but to use our influence in the construction sector and make it clear we don’t want those who don’t apologise and don’t pay compensation in our Borough.

If they pay so little heed to the health and safety of their own workers then it is clear that they don’t give a monkey about the safety of our residents who live next to sites either.

I will also be asking Legal services to confirm that the Council Pension fund can contact our fund managers to make sure that if we hold any money in these rogue companies that they are taken to task.

Council, please support this motion and send a message that Blacklisting will not be tolerated in any form or in any industry".

The motion was passed unanimously. Today Dave is in Court again asking for justice. After the debate a Councillor told me that on the London Cross Rail project a contractor which was known to have a good record on health & safety and high Union membership has lost its contract. It seems Blacklisting is still going on. Can other Councils and CLPs consider this motion item 17 as well.

Newham Council supports TUC March and calls for alternative economic policy

On Monday evening Newham Council supported unanimously a motion to support the TUC anti-austerity March on Saturday October 20th and for the next Labour Government to deliver an
alternative economic policy for a future that works.

I moved the motion and below is the speech I gave. This was not a call for a return to the days of the loony left but to rebalance our economy and bring about growth and jobs. 

"Council, next month on Saturday 20 October, the Trade Union Congress has organised national marches and rallies in central London and Glasgow against the failure of this Tory led coalition government to deal with the current economic crisis and get our country on the road to recovery.

This motion calls on the Council to support the March and to encourage local residents, Labour Party members and trade union affiliates to attend and take part. As we did for last year’s TUC March  where over 400,000 people took part in a demonstration in London. 

 

This included a proud contingent from Newham who gathered beforehand outside Stratford station and went together behind our local Labour Party banners, our Labour Mayor, our Labour Councillors and labour trade union affiliates.

 

While our marching and demonstrating peacefully against the misery of this Government’s policies is vital and important, marching is not just an end in itself. It is an act of solidarity and a symbol of our opposition to this cabinet of millionaires and their attempt to make the poor and vulnerable pay for the greed and thievery of the rich. 

Let us never ever forget, that it wasn’t over paid lollipop ladies, nurses or town hall cleaners who brought about this recession. It was corrupt bankers and financiers who had long argued that the market alone knew best, deregulation worked and the so-called “invisible hand” would keep us safe and prosperous.

This turned out to be at best wrong and at worse a deceit. We need to learn from this experience. That is why the motion also calls on us to make sure that we not only do our bit by marching on October 20th but also advancing the arguments for change to our economy.  

Not only for a Plan B but for the next Labour Government to adopt the kind of policies that think it is economic illiteracy to pay building workers to stay at home on the dole while we have a massive housing shortage. It is economic madness that the wealthy who tend to save not spend get tax cuts while the working poor who will spend lose benefits.

An economy where people are in work, making things, selling things, paying taxes and earning money that they will then spend into the local economy and create more demand for jobs and services.

It is not as if this hasn’t been done before.  In 1948 we had to recover from 6 years of total war and had truly massive levels of debt, far, far higher than today yet we were still able to pay for a huge house building programmes, create the welfare state and the NHS.

 

Council, we need an alternative economic programme. We need to not only firefight this current recession with a programme to get people back into work. We also need to think about where we want our society to go?

Do we want to move towards an American model of an increasingly polarised society with an ever smaller number of super rich and huge numbers of desperate poor, or do we move towards a society that prides itself at its levels of income equality. A more equal and fairer society that all the evidence shows benefits the wealthy as well as the poor.

Council, this year is the 120th anniversary of the first ever elected Labour MP, Keir Hardie, in our own borough. Let us not only celebrate this historic advance of working class people into the mother of all Parliaments and let us show solitary with the ideals of Keir on October 20th by marching but also let us so “get” that October 20th is also about politics and economics.

 

There is a battle of ideas raging out there that the left lost in the past but which we now must win.  Council, we desperately need an economic Future that Works.  Council support the motion, I move."

James Keir Hardie: 120 Years

This evening Labour MP, Hilary Benn, shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, opened an exhibition at the Old Town
Hall in Stratford on the life of Keir Hardie.

This was to mark the 120th anniversary of Keir being elected for West Ham as the first ever independent Labour MP.

A 11 page pamphlet (see cover) was also distributed.

Hilary spoke to members of the Newham Labour Group before the Full Council meeting. He reminded us that this historic town hall was the scene of Hardie's famous victory in 1892.

He also pointed out that many of the things that Hardie had fought for in his time were delivered by Labour.

He quoted the interesting advice that Hardie gave to a younger colleague that he "should drink less, read more and think longer".

After opening the exhibition Hilary also gave a speech to Labour Group (below) about current political issues and problems followed by a Q&A.

He told a nice story about how in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis the Labour Government were forced to nationalise the Bank, Northern Rock.

He rang his father, Tony Benn and said "you know Dad that you were always in favour of nationalising the Banks? Well, guess what we'd done....". (Hat tip photo Ali G)