Thursday, January 21, 2010

Brendan Barber - in Praise of Nick Clegg?

OOOOOOOOOHHHHH - and another one! The Labour apparatchiks are falling over themselves to praise our man. Could it be the penny is at last beginning to drop? I do hope so. As a great supporter of and believer in, the trade union movement, I am not a Lib Dem by accident. I look forward to the day when my old pals wake up and smell the coffee, "New Labour" has betrayed the movement - at every turn.

So Kevin Maguire is succeeded by none other than TUC general secretary Brendan Barber in heaping praise on Nick Clegg over the Cadbury take over. Now, as I have mentioned before, my only dealings with BB were when we spent a good few hours at Transport House in a roundtable trying to resolve an interunion dispute - this was around 7 years ago - the dispute is still unresolved (!). But one thing that struck me was that he was an incredibly fair man, a good listener and someone who wasn't going to be railroaded by anyone.

Apparently Nick met with him a couple of weeks ago and I have no doubt that will have prepared the ground for Mr B to be so publicly appreciative of his intervention in PMQs yesterday. I hope what he has realised is that he and Nick may not have a meeting of minds on many things, but in him we have a leader with great integrity who will not be guided by the latest focus group or vested interest, be that of union or big business. I hope that he will have realised that Nick is someone who will stand up against unfairness, injustice, oppression and downright greed and dishonesty. I hope he may, perhaps in an unguarded moment. recognise that the interests of those many of his members (myself included) he seeks to represent, may be better served if he hitched his wagon elsewhere.

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