Labour leaders at the TUC: an institution
Keir Starmer addressed the TUC in Brighton on 10th September as Labour Prime Minister. Historically it is a relatively rare event. I wasn’t at the Brighton Centre but watched via the TUC’s YouTube feed. Starmer was not and is not a great speaker although he is improving a bit. If you speak a lot this does tend to happen. His speech did actually address what was going to be done to reverse the Tories hostile environment for trade unions. It was probably the first to touch directly on Labour-Union relations since Harold Wilson’s Social Contract (or Contrick as some had it) of 1974/5. I was 18 then and not anywhere near attending a Congress in the trade unionists and their wives era.
The rest of Starmer’s speech avoided focusing on Labour’s renewed austerity agenda. The fact that the speech was made at all relates back to an institutional agreement in 1900 when the Labour Representation Committee was set up. The trade union leaders of the day looked to get representation in Parliament with the aim of passing some measures which benefited workers and in particular protected unions. The relationship was and is between union leaders and officials and Labour, not rank and file trade unionists. It might benefit the latter but only with independent organisation at the grassroots to secure improvements from employers in practice.
I did hear Tony Blair and Gordon Brown speak at the TUC in person. Blair could get and keep the attention of an audience in such a way that what he was actually saying didn’t register that much. That was probably just as well for him. Brown who invariably started a speech with a football joke (as Starmer did today- see Everton)spoke quickly going through streams of economic statistics. The attention usually wandered.
One might summarise that Starmer has room for improvement but that will only come from campaigning from below, not voice coaching.
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