GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

of, or even much interest in, my respect is generally not extended to the

officials. They specialise in the arts (excuse the pun) of obfuscation and

procrastination, while aiming to make their own lives as simple as possible. In

my experience, only one Secretary of State overruled his officials and changed

his mind on an important issue that we were lobbying on. That was Andy

Burnham who listened to the arguments we made on the extension of the

period of copyright that protects performers and sound recordings. It was an

unpopular change in some quarters, particularly with those who see copyright

protection as an impediment. They do not see why they should have to

acknowledge or, God forbid, pay, creators when they are making their

mashups and adding music to their homemade videos of something like

squirrels dancing on washing lines that they post on YouTube. The aim of the

campaign was to increase the protection from 50 years from the release of the

recording to 90 years. We settled in the end for 70 years. The reason was the

value of many tracks originally released in the 1960s and 1970s which are still

being

played and are still very popular. We knew that many of the performers on

these recordings were now elderly and were going to lose valuable broadcast

royalties as their recorded performances slipped into the public domain. Much

to the chagrin of the civil servants, we won that campaign, but many other

campaigns fell by the wayside. When you are a trade union official you soon

learn the art of perseverance.

Like many of you, I have been proud to have been a long term member of the

Labour Party. Even when I was having intense rows with Labour politicians,

and believe me I had many, my loyalty to the Party and its principles were

unswerving. The slogan that I chose for this BGCM is ‘All Together Now’. Of

course, this has musical connotations and is a popular little slogan and phrase.

It is even the title of a Saturday night TV talent show. But it is also a slogan that

can be used to epitomise the collective nature of the labour movement. We

have always had differences of opinions and differences in emphasis within the

trade union movement and within the Labour Party, but most of the time we

have been able to reach a consensus and a compromise which takes us

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