GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

hungry, hungry backgrounds and desired to improve their life chances as a

result. Sometimes you have got to make use of your medals. That was

Manchester 2000’s bid for the Olympics. By the way, we have been bidding

for over 40 years, so London 2012 was a long journey and sometimes, as I

have learnt, it does take time, but that is no reason for us to stand on our

laurels or not do the right thing.

This is a shot of Benji Stanley, a 14 year old schoolboy shot dead on the streets of Moss Side on January 3 rd at 8.40 in the evening in 1993. I always

share that image, because it still hurts me now. I feel it in my heart and it

makes me angry, because after that inner city review group I never ever

believed that what I saw in Los Angeles and my other trips around the world

would ever come here. I never believed there would be a gang culture, I never

believed that we could fail a small minutia of society in not giving them a good

educational opportunity and, as a result, see them taken on an apprenticeship

or become entrepreneurial, not become the weed sellers or the hustlers or the

pimps. By the way when I grew up in my generation some of them were, but

that was because they were failed by education and education failed them.

When Benji was shot dead I believe something needed to change.

I was part of Live Aid in 1985. Geldof did it with the F word, I just did it with

sport. 250 metres away from here at the Wembley Conference Centre we

launched the Youth Charter. Everybody was there. Not many people said no to

me then, everybody, public, private, third, community sector. Anyone you can

think of was there intergenerationally and it was a charter that would not be

about the winning, it would be about the taking part. It was to provide young

people with an opportunity to develop in life. Anyone you can think of post-War

in their sporting achievement, irrespective of what they look like, where they

come from, what they believe in, what they sound like, whatever their lifestyle

choice, signed that charter, because we have got Royal charters, why couldn’t

we have a youth charter?

What have we achieved? We have now been going for 26 years. We have

pioneered, proven, empowered, everything, but it has not succeeded, because

everything is a timeline and I can rush through this, because that is just

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