GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

thrown very much into the deep, because it was right in the middle of an

election and I knew there had been a very, very difficult time, there had been a

massive court case that had been very, very expensive that had cost this

organisation, and its members, a fortune and that had to change. I was cast

into a lobbying pool. It depended which candidate could pull the hardest. That

seemed to be the way when I came in and, if I am honest, I was not young and

I was not impressionable, I was my own person, I was still quite old, it was not

that long ago, but you had to make up your mind, because it was not for the

good. I am a left wing trade unionist, I am a socialist. I did not recruit or vote

for Doug or any other candidate on the basis of what their politics were. I look

at what is behind the person, whether it is a man, a woman, whatever, and look

behind what the politics are, because I want somebody to do the best job for

this organisation.

If I use Doug specifically, because I was a supporter of Doug, not because I

knew him better than the other candidate, because I actually knew the other

candidate better than him, but I went through a series of phone calls from the

other candidate which, some of them, I am not exaggerating, lasted three

hours, a phone call. That is time in my life I will never get back. You can only

say the same thing so many times before people start switching off. I picked

Doug on the ability that I saw behind what he did, that he had the ability to run

an organisation and if you think he has had to evolve in this job as well,

because when he came in he knew exactly what he was getting into. He knew

he was going to be the General Secretary of a member led organisation, he

knew that it was an educational trust that he would have to get involved with.

What he did not know was that he was going to run a hotel as well, so that is

an extra thing that we have thrown on, but, to his credit, anybody who goes

there can see that the job has been done properly by him. If he was up for

election tomorrow, I would vote for Doug again, based on what I knew before,

most certainly based on what I know now.

The fact is you cannot just base elections in the future on popularity, based on

the numbers game. We have to look at the factors behind what the person has

done in the past, we have to look at what they are going to offer to the

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