A new political movement

Yesterday (September 28) at the Labour Party Conference was a turning point in our battle against this vicious Tory government.

 
Unlike previous Labour conferences I was riveted to my seat desperate not to miss a single speech.

 
The election of Jeremy Corbyn has led to a transformation of the Labour Party. As Tom Watson said, “We are now an anti-austerity party,” and, for those that had any doubts, this was reinforced by John McDonnell’s powerful speech as the new shadow chancellor.

 
John vowed that Labour would take on the super-rich tax dodgers, like Starbucks, Amazon and Google, to force them to pay their fair share of taxes.

 
End austerity

 
But it was his commitment to ending austerity through an economic programme of growth, real pay rises, a living wage and moving everyone out of poverty, through the creation of a fair, just society that really struck a note.

 
When John insisted that “austerity isn’t an economic necessity, it’s a political choice,” he was speaking on behalf of us all.

 
He went on to say, “There will be cuts to tackle the deficit but our cuts will not be the number of police officers or nurses or teachers – they will be cuts to the corporate welfare system.”

 
He spoke about the need to support trade unions in the fight against the trade union Bill and the importance of Labour supporting every strike and being on every picket line.

 
This is a transformation and was echoed in speech after speech. Owen Smith, the shadow works and pensions minister, insisted he would fight the welfare Bill line by line and Labour is no longer an abstentionist party on welfare.

 
This is new language and a signal that there is a new political movement building against the Tories.

 
Unite is at the head of the anti-cuts, anti-austerity movement and we need every member to be part of it.

 
The Labour Party is firmly behind every worker in this country and we now have a party and a Leader that we can be proud of supporting, knowing that they will put our interests before those of the richest in society.

 
It’s exciting times and I can’t wait for today’s conference (September 29) and Jeremy Corbyn’s speech.

 
Mike Hedges is a Unite EC member and is pictured above with John McDonnell at the People’s Assembly fringe meeting.