GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

PAUL GIBSON: Good afternoon. Thank you for the invite today. I have spoken at

conference a few times and there is nothing more nerve wracking than getting

up following someone that has done a fantastic piece of work, but now I realise

there is, because a lot of what I was about to say has already just been said, so

I have been scrambling some notes to try and say some different things so we

are not saying the same things about what Northern College does. Some of

the invite questions we were asked is about what Northern College does, the

partnership with the GFTU and about the future potential and I thought I would

chuck in there as well where some of the money goes. We are funded by the

GFTU, by the affiliates, and I think it is important that you see where that

money goes when we work with students.

If you have not been to Northern College before or are not aware of it, it is an

old stately home that used to be owned by the Wentworths. Students stay

with us for five days on trade union courses and for that they get four nights’

accommodation, they get their bed, breakfast and evening meal, two teas and

coffees and a lunch and that is for £150. As has already been discussed,

sadly, the Tories decided to start putting swingeing cuts in place, particularly for

trade union courses. Without that £150 we would not be able to survive. It

does not sound like much, but I appreciate that for unions it does start to add

up, but it is a godsend for us. When we start courses, this is the ethos that we

run, whether it is a trade union course or whether it is one of our courses. As

Nelson Mandela rightly said, education is the most powerful weapon which you

can use to change the world, and it is great to see students that arrive lacking

in confidence, really nervous, be that trade union students or students on any

other course. Those sort of students then progress on to really fantastic things.

A bit of a colourful slide then. I do not know if you can read all of it, but our

mission statement there is to provide outstanding adult residential and

community education for the empowerment and transformation of individuals

and communities. What we try and do, and this runs all the way through the

courses we do, so trade unions are in there as well, is education that provides

opportunities for the unemployed to achieve work, because I think we all

appreciate that if someone is in work the power that that can bring to them and

44