2.40 p.m.
Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): Let me begin by congratulating my fellow "maidens" who are present today on breaking their duck. I also thank the staff of the House, who have helped every one of us new starters with a large degree of patience and professionalism. They really have helped us all to get somewhere near up to speed during the past few weeks.
I pay tribute to my predecessor, John McWilliam - a man who gave 26 years of sterling service to the House, and a man for whom those who really knew him in this place had nothing but the utmost respect. John acted as Deputy Speaker, particularly in Westminster Hall. He may not have been one of Parliament's flamboyant types, but he was one of those people whom every successful organisation needs: a man who got things done quietly, efficiently and positively. I can only add my name to the long list of those whom John has helped, here in Westminster and back home in the glorious part of the world that is the Blaydon constituency.
Most people recognise Blaydon when they are told "Yes, that is where the races were held", and some even know the date, 9 June 1862, from the first verse of the Geordie national anthem. But my constituency consists of much more than Blaydon town. Few people realise that the constituency stretches for many miles, through some of Britain's most beautiful countryside. It encompasses towns and villages with a rich history and diversity all their own. That diversity has enabled it to develop into the place where red kites have been reintroduced into the wild, right next to the biggest shopping centre in Europe, while at the entrance to the constituency is the symbol of the renaissance of the North-East, the angel of the north.
Our part of the world was the cradle of the industrial revolution. We dug the coal, we built the railways, we made the steel. We developed communities that had great self-belief. We had our own welfare state before Beveridge was all out of short pants. We built houses, sports clubs and libraries. We encouraged people to take up musical instruments, and we learnt to care for one another when no one else would. Above all, we became what we are today: an area whose roots are embedded in the world of hard work - from chemicals to coal mining, from farming to forestry, from building earth movers to building ships.
Like many other parts of the country, we are privileged to have thousands of public sector workers living and working in Blaydon. Contrary to the view of far too many in the House, these people are not bowler-hatted bureaucrats counting beans or shuffling papers; they are the glue that holds our society together. They are the people who tidy up when things go wrong in our lives - when our parents cannot take care of themselves, when our child goes off the way, when we are ill, when our house is on fire, when our whole life is in danger of falling around us - and who do all the thousands of other things that public servants do day in, day out, 365 nights and days of the year.
I am massively proud that I, like my comrade and hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Moffat), had the great honour to represent well over 1 million of those people as president of Unison, "the" public-sector union. I am proud of the many positive things that my union, working in conjunction with my Government, helped to make real for working people in this country. I shall mention just two.
The first is the national minimum wage. Despite howls of protest around the House, my party introduced it, albeit nearly two decades after my union began the campaign. Never again will we see job advertisements for security guards at £1.75 an hour - and don't forget to bring your own dog!
The other part of my work in Unison that makes me most proud is the role that we played in the peace process in Northern Ireland. Unison was one of the first cross-community bodies to make a public declaration in favour of the Good Friday agreement, and many of my Irish colleagues in Unison took real risks for peace. Many of us talk willy-nilly about life-and-death issues, but we should never forget that, for far too long, that is exactly what many of our people in Northern Ireland faced. If there is one thing on which we can all agree in the House, surely it is that we must all work towards a real lasting peace, based on respect for each other's beliefs and enshrined in real democracy.
As I said earlier, the people of Blaydon are no strangers to hard work and, sadly, hard times. The devastation caused by the ideological attacks on our communities in the 1980s left ingrained in my people a strong belief in one thing: they never want to see the return of a Conservative Government. As a coal miner who lost his job, his trade, his community and part of his culture, I could not agree more. Never again should unemployment be used as a tool of public policy. Never again should a Government be allowed to destroy an industry and a key part of our nation's natural resources just to prove a political point. And never again should we allow our communities to be run down, ignored or forgotten.
The truth is that we are all in this together. In a global economy, we cannot afford to be anything other than united. That is why the people of the Blaydon constituency particularly welcome my party's commitment to bring full employment to the North-East. It is by no means an easy objective, but it is one that I intend to chase up constantly with those on the Government Front Bench. I am greedy. I do not just want jobs for people in the north; I want the best jobs for people in the north. I want good jobs, I want high-skill, high-quality, secure jobs, and I want jobs based on good employment rights. That is why I will encourage the Government to implement in full - as promised in the manifesto - the so-called Warwick agreement, which addresses some of the massive shortcomings affecting people at work that have developed over the past 25 years.
The people of Blaydon deserve to work in safe, healthy workplaces. They deserve to be paid a decent, legally binding wage. They deserve to take well-earned holiday breaks, again guaranteed by law. They deserve the right to be represented by skilled trade union officials. They deserve to be able to take time off to help bind their families together in every possible way. They deserve, and I will demand, that the Government intervene to protect their jobs whenever and wherever necessary.
I am immensely proud and honoured to be the representative of the people of Blaydon and its surrounding communities. I want to end by referring to one of those communities, the former mining village of Chopwell - a village whose pride in its socialist roots is personified in a miners' banner featuring Keir Hardie, Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Written on the banner are these words:
"We take up the task eternal, the burden and the lessons."
To me, that task is to ensure that the House delivers a world in which people are able to live in dignity, security and peace. The burden is one that we should all relish, and the lesson that we have learnt is that the best way in which to do that is to reject the failed policies of the 1980s and 1990s and support a programme based on democratic socialism - which, in their wisdom, the people of Blaydon have chosen to do yet again.
I thank you and the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my speech today. I look forward to many future opportunities to play my part in the House on behalf of the great people throughout the Blaydon constituency.
2.48 p.m.
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