Islington supports striking workers!

Jeremy, you're welcome, thank you, thank you to everyone who is here tonight as a show of solidarity with all those who are

striking

and all those people who are dreaming, hoping, praying, demanding and working for a different and better society, but I also want to say thank you. to everyone who has organized tonight's event because these things don't happen by accident thank you Ruth thank you Andy thank you to all the Council traits and all the unions who supported this particular event which is also broadcast live to many people outside of this room and throughout not only our district but throughout the country and certainly in other places as well because it is about communication and getting our message across, this is yes, a series of industrial disputes and I will refer to them in a moment, but It is also about the type of world and society we want to live in.

Do we really want to live in a world in this country where there are more food banks than McDonald's branches where there is a huge mental health center? crisis among working people, among unemployed people and among students in school and university, do we want to live in a world where the richest have become very rich over the last two and three years, particularly, and salaries are Have they stagnated or decreased? and living standards are collapsing, do we really want to be in a world where people are so desperate that they stand outside a supermarket asking someone to give them something from their bag as they leave the supermarket?

That's what we've reduced. this country and it's disgusting, it's shameful and it's unnecessary and all the time we have the super rich flaunting it and if you listen to commercial radio during the day, what do you find but subliminal ads attacking the public sector? private education subliminal ads subliminal ads for private healthcare and today the Secretary of State for Health announced that he had held a very useful round table, as he described it, with all the private healthcare providers in Downing Street to discuss the role they could play in healthcare in For the future, I have only one message for him: it is very simple: take control of the private healthcare hospitals and put them into the NHS and instead of saying we will improve the healthcare service across the country putting even more money into the private sector. care sector do what our Council has done, bring services back in-house and we have a national care service with the same principles as the NHS, care when you need it free at the point of use, surely that has to be the correct way to Otherwise, you have to sit on the express level and get as many people through and then when you go through all the strikes that are going on right now, there is a very good reason for every one of them, except for any one that you are looking at. this one, which just happens to be tuned in from the Daily Mail, I'll just say this to you Daily Mail readers, no one takes the strike lightly, no one loses wages, probably no one is out of work like me, you know the problems, you know the problems and they know. the difficulties but they are doing it because there is no alternative and I was not in the least surprised by the vote of the firefighters today a service in which we all trust a service that we admire a service that we all applaud has lost weight "20 of all the firefighters have lost their jobs in the last 10 years; in other words, there are a fifth fewer firefighters.

Is it any wonder that response times are inevitably slower, that's the case and then you look at the firefighters, you look at the

workers

? health, you look at the stress they have. We are passing and it is very good that MPS on tour appears in the electronic departments and says that we applaud the innovation of those staff who are managing to turn chairs into beds so that people can wait throughout the wait in the corridors. more pleasant environment where are the beds needed? Why have we closed so many? I have reduced the number of beds in hospitals and why now we talk magnificently about care at home without any caregiver.

The whole principle of healthcare is care. Yes. You need the medications, but you also need that psychological support. We all know that when you feel sick, it is the people who talk to you as much as the medications that will help you get better. They think they don't seem to understand any of it. So to the nurses who are on strike, I know the pain you are going through. I have discussed it with them. They are doing it because they feel there is no alternative but that is a way to get decent wages and conditions and then teachers again.

I am not surprised by the massive vote of teachers across the country, why do so many young people study at university, study to be teachers, go through the entire qualification process proud to become teachers and then discover that they are buried under an avalanche of ticking box exercises about what they should or shouldn't do in school and the national curriculum imposed on them, much of the innovation and joy is removed from teaching and, due to a shortage of teaching assistants teachers, teaching a mixed abilities class becomes very, very difficult. to retain the attention of all those students, it is surprising that so many teachers end up leaving the profession and joining the management professionally when they were in school or college, so we are wasting the ambition and love for teaching of so many teachers.

It's so stupid that any modern society would waste the skills of nurses, the skills of firefighters, the skills of teachers for what, so that someone somewhere can get another even bigger tax cut and be even richer, and then this economic theory will trickle down. Hold on, I'll tell you what there is no drip, it is greed that is destroying our public services and our public sector. I just like to say this about others that aren't necessarily in a union, but that I've been in. picketing with a lot of postal

workers

over the last few months, as we have all done, and on that beautiful August day when we started, we had that big demonstration outside the sorting office on the Bush industrial estate and I said it's not going to be like that in November and December it was not and it is not and it is hard and absolute congratulations to all the officials for the loyalty they have shown to the union for their communication skills and for their dubious campaign and, once again, it is not just about playing, but about the pressure they are under, it is a computer that records every step they take and the coach then waits to say: well, you came back five minutes early, so you have to do five more minutes tomorrow, come on, these are people who want to be postal workers because they enjoy doing the work of being part of the community and therefore what Kai was saying about creating community wealth by working with the CWU is very welcome because it is about the contribution that unions and they can all make our society, but Royal Mail, a very profitable and rich organization, essentially wants to make them self-employed on our Amazon, that's what it's all about, so this is a fight about pay, conditions and respect, but also it's about inspiring people who work at Starbucks, who work at Amazon, who are employees of um Samuel's Bakery and many others who need to be in unions.

You will find a table at the back of the PJP peace and justice project where we are campaigning for the Union. recognition in that baking industry, as well as in ours and at Starbucks, because we need to unionize all those people who are forced to work in the gig economy, where their only friend is a cell phone that It tells them if they have a job or not, if they have a job or not, how many hours they have, the way people are treated is inhumane and, at the same time, now we have yet another law in Parliament. damage or destroy union rights in Italy, Spain and France, there is a constitutional right for unions to be consulted or an obligation, and if they don't have anything like the minimum service legislation the government is now proposing, they are proposing a minimum service . the legislation with circle shops claims that none of the unions are prepared to protect the emergency services during a strike, absolute nonsense.

I was with the ambulance workers on Brewery Road, they were quite rightly taking action to demand decent pay conditions, they also had more than one eye on the radio in case there was a very serious emergency and they would rush to deal with that emergency serious. Working class communities don't let other working class communities down, they take action to support each other, that's really what viewers do. about that when they take away our freedoms through the Police and Public Order Bill when they demonize immigrants because they are desperate people trying to find a safe place and contribute to our world.

I absolutely agree with what Joe and others have said before, every one of those people desperate people in Calais trying to get to safety do you know what tomorrow they will be our neighbors tomorrow they will be our teachers tomorrow they will be our nurse tomorrow they will be our engineers they are the people? of the future let's not let the racist right divide us we are united as a community to achieve the kind of social change and social justice we want in our world and when our media spends its time denigrating workers like they have I always have, I have I have been involved in industrial action and was a union organizer before becoming a Member of Parliament and the abuse that was thrown at us during each of those strikes was absolutely incredible, it is important that we communicate with each other.

Also, we set up our own ways of communication, we only have a daily payment if you can trust that's the morning star and Ben Chaco is here tonight, thank you Ben for being here tonight, but it's important that we communicate with each other . the technology is there the technology is there to make that communication it's up to us to make sure that we control it and we're able to convey that message. I think every political leader, union or anything else should always be held accountable. absolutely fair and correct, but the way our media is just abusing Mick Lynch, abusing Dave Ward, abusing Kevin Courtney, abusing anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, that's just not acceptable, so it's our solidarity which is very important, but what is different this time is very What is different this time is that the mass of the public is not fooled by all this nonsense, they understand why these industrial actions are being carried out, they understand that sense of unity and you know what, when the railroad workers get their pay raise, when the firefighters get their pay. goes up when teachers get their pay rise when civil servants get their pay rise when the position is when their pay rise Everything changes because then we can also address the issue of poverty, homelessness and all the other problems that policy today unfortunately raised is often not represented in Parliament today's politics is what happens in public meetings in demonstrations in front of food banks in community centers is that wonderful creative thinking of artistic effort of industrial effort of the type of community and society that we want to live in is our solidarity through social networks through physical contact and all that is what will win these disputes and by doing so, soon it will be goodbye.

I can say goodbye to the conservatives. I am tired of inequality, injustice and forced poverty. in this country but defeat it and when does it stop despite it on Wednesday thank you very much