Dundee East Labour
7 December 2019
Comrades and friends, it’s been a great night and a great rally.
And I want to thank Maeve, Rosa, Declan, Kevin and Callum, and our speakers Roz, Dave, Manuel, Jennifer and John.
It’s been a great night, it’s been a great campaign.
But we know everyone in this room knows it will mean nothing if we do not win on Thursday.
Because the choice in this election is clear.
By this time next week there will either be a Tory or a Labour government.
That’s the choice.
So it is a choice between continued cuts - cuts to wages, to pensions and to benefits.
A continued rise in foodbanks and the return of rough sleeping.
Or a turning point to building an economy and re-founding our society so that it works not just for the few at the top for the millionaires, but which works for the many - for the millions.
I think back over the last few weeks to those great people I have met on the campaign trail.
From the volunteers running the Food Bank in Drumchapel I met on the first day of the campaign, who know that only a Labour government will end food bank Britain, to the families coping with need-less drug deaths that I met in Springburn just last night, who know that only a Labour government will invest in our communities, and in all of our people to bring hope out of despair.
The WASPI women who came all the way from Aberdeen to Birkenshaw to make their voices heard who know that only a Labour government is on their side.
That we will not simply demand justice, we will deliver justice.
To Fife Gingerbread where we spoke of poverty, of a Universal Credit system that is deliberately designed to drive people into debt by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, who still defend it.
Shame on them.
I spoke to people, and I listened to people, who know that a Labour government will not simply mitigate or tinker with universal credit.
A Labour government will scrap Universal Credit.
And so I say to you tonight, that we have to win on Thursday to stop five more years of this.
Because across Scotland in this campaign I see hardship and injustice.
But I see resistance, and I see hope as well.
So it is simple we have five days to make history.
Five days to elect not a minority Labour Government in a hung Parliament, but a majority Labour Government, on a radical programme which will transform this country not for just the next five years, but for an entire generation
And as we meet in Glasgow tonight, we draw inspiration from the Red Clydesiders.
Our appeal today, our call tonight is for socialism in our time.
A living wage, a mass programme of council house building, full employment and lifelong education.
I tell you we are the inheritors of Maxton, of Wheatley, of Jennie Lee, of Mary Barbour and yes, of Keir Hardie.
And we are proud to be their inheritors.
You know that over the last decade we have seen a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power but it is a fundamental redistribution in the wrong direction.
So a Labour government will introduce a Living Wage of £10 an hour to end the low pay economy, and we will end the long hours culture that goes with it.
So we will end once and for all the UK opt out of the 48 hour week and so lift a quarter of a million workers in Scotland out of excessive working hours.
And we will lift 700 thousand workers out of poverty pay because it is a living wage for “all” that we mean.
There will be no age discrimination under Labour.
We will build homes again.
We will build 120,000 council houses in the public sector across Scotland, creating 50,000 jobs, and we will work with housing Associations and Housing Co-operatives too.
We will roll back private landlordism in cities like this, and in cities like Edinburgh where we will establish public housing again, and we will build in rural Scotland too.
We will end homelessness – not just by building more houses – but by treating people with dignity by investing in our National Health Service, with a new priority for mental health.
And by building a social security system on the values of common humanity regardless of where you were born, or where you have ended up.
We will re-adopt full employment as a goal of public policy once again.
So that when we make the just transition from the toxic economy to the sustainable society with our Green Industrial Revolution, we do not leave working people and working class communities behind.
We do not leave them at the mercy of market forces but we plan our economy and we implement an industrial strategy.
Because if there is anybody out there who believes that the market will get us to where we need to be, that to quote Boris Johnson that the “dynamic market economy” is the only way, go and ask the workers at CS Wind in Machrahanish served with redundancy notices just this week.
Go and ask the BiFab workers at Methil and Burntisland and Arnish Point, still waiting for orders to come in, with skills and yards idle.
Go and speak to Les Ashton and the workers at the Caley Railway Works who lost their jobs in August.
And let me say – those workers should be an integral part of our public transport system which should be an integral part of our railway system, which under a Labour Government will be a railway system in public ownership again.
And the Royal Mail will be back in public ownership.
And the national grid will be in public ownership so that we can build the energy network we need for the twenty first century, according to the people motive instead of the profit motive.
And we will kick out that profit motive and the shareholder dividend from our National Health Service too.
We will honour the founding principles of the NHS – free at the point of need, paid for out of general taxation – which is not only being abandoned by the Tories who want to sell it off to Donald Trump.
It is being badly let down by an SNP Government which is failing patients, failing families and failing NHS staff as well.
So I tell you that the only Party that can save our NHS is the Party which founded it: the Labour Party.
In this General Election, our goal, my ambition is not merely to “deprive the Tories of their majority”.
It is to sweep the Tories out of power.
And it is to elect a new Government.
A new Government that will bring about fundamental and irreversible change in this society.
Based on the values of the helping hand in place of the iron heel.
Based on the values of equality and anti-racism not hate and division.
Based on the values of bread but the values of roses too.
So let us get the message out.
It is only the Labour Party that can form a new government in six days' time.
It is only the Labour Party that can get to work in Government in six days time.
It is only the Labour Party that can replace a rotten decade of austerity and cuts with a new decade of investment and democracy.
Only the Labour Party that can scrap Universal Credit.
Only the Labour Party that can deliver a Living wage, employment rights including trade union rights from day one.
Only the Labour Party that can deliver for the WASPI women and keep the free TV licence for the over 75s.
Only the Labour Party that can not just put together a public sector bid for Scotrail, but which can renationalise the whole bloody railway!
And let’s get the message out that the only way to get a Labour Government is to elect Labour MPs from Scotland.
There is no short cut to a Jeremy Corbyn government through any other Party.
So let us fight for every last vote, let us do it with renewed determination with new energy, drawing on our enduring socialist values.
And the ideas and idealism of co-operation , of equality and a burning desire to achieve socialism in our time.
Because I tell you that when people come together behind this great movement for change.
When we stand together, nothing and no-one can stop us.
And when Labour wins, Scotland wins.
Thank you.
Comrades and friends, it’s been a great night and a great rally.
And I want to thank Maeve, Rosa, Declan, Kevin and Callum, and our speakers Roz, Dave, Manuel, Jennifer and John.
It’s been a great night, it’s been a great campaign.
But we know everyone in this room knows it will mean nothing if we do not win on Thursday.
Because the choice in this election is clear.
By this time next week there will either be a Tory or a Labour government.
That’s the choice.
So it is a choice between continued cuts - cuts to wages, to pensions and to benefits.
A continued rise in foodbanks and the return of rough sleeping.
Or a turning point to building an economy and re-founding our society so that it works not just for the few at the top for the millionaires, but which works for the many - for the millions.
I think back over the last few weeks to those great people I have met on the campaign trail.
From the volunteers running the Food Bank in Drumchapel I met on the first day of the campaign, who know that only a Labour government will end food bank Britain, to the families coping with need-less drug deaths that I met in Springburn just last night, who know that only a Labour government will invest in our communities, and in all of our people to bring hope out of despair.
The WASPI women who came all the way from Aberdeen to Birkenshaw to make their voices heard who know that only a Labour government is on their side.
That we will not simply demand justice, we will deliver justice.
To Fife Gingerbread where we spoke of poverty, of a Universal Credit system that is deliberately designed to drive people into debt by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, who still defend it.
Shame on them.
I spoke to people, and I listened to people, who know that a Labour government will not simply mitigate or tinker with universal credit.
A Labour government will scrap Universal Credit.
And so I say to you tonight, that we have to win on Thursday to stop five more years of this.
Because across Scotland in this campaign I see hardship and injustice.
But I see resistance, and I see hope as well.
So it is simple we have five days to make history.
Five days to elect not a minority Labour Government in a hung Parliament, but a majority Labour Government, on a radical programme which will transform this country not for just the next five years, but for an entire generation
And as we meet in Glasgow tonight, we draw inspiration from the Red Clydesiders.
Our appeal today, our call tonight is for socialism in our time.
A living wage, a mass programme of council house building, full employment and lifelong education.
I tell you we are the inheritors of Maxton, of Wheatley, of Jennie Lee, of Mary Barbour and yes, of Keir Hardie.
And we are proud to be their inheritors.
You know that over the last decade we have seen a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power but it is a fundamental redistribution in the wrong direction.
So a Labour government will introduce a Living Wage of £10 an hour to end the low pay economy, and we will end the long hours culture that goes with it.
So we will end once and for all the UK opt out of the 48 hour week and so lift a quarter of a million workers in Scotland out of excessive working hours.
And we will lift 700 thousand workers out of poverty pay because it is a living wage for “all” that we mean.
There will be no age discrimination under Labour.
We will build homes again.
We will build 120,000 council houses in the public sector across Scotland, creating 50,000 jobs, and we will work with housing Associations and Housing Co-operatives too.
We will roll back private landlordism in cities like this, and in cities like Edinburgh where we will establish public housing again, and we will build in rural Scotland too.
We will end homelessness – not just by building more houses – but by treating people with dignity by investing in our National Health Service, with a new priority for mental health.
And by building a social security system on the values of common humanity regardless of where you were born, or where you have ended up.
We will re-adopt full employment as a goal of public policy once again.
So that when we make the just transition from the toxic economy to the sustainable society with our Green Industrial Revolution, we do not leave working people and working class communities behind.
We do not leave them at the mercy of market forces but we plan our economy and we implement an industrial strategy.
Because if there is anybody out there who believes that the market will get us to where we need to be, that to quote Boris Johnson that the “dynamic market economy” is the only way, go and ask the workers at CS Wind in Machrahanish served with redundancy notices just this week.
Go and ask the BiFab workers at Methil and Burntisland and Arnish Point, still waiting for orders to come in, with skills and yards idle.
Go and speak to Les Ashton and the workers at the Caley Railway Works who lost their jobs in August.
And let me say – those workers should be an integral part of our public transport system which should be an integral part of our railway system, which under a Labour Government will be a railway system in public ownership again.
And the Royal Mail will be back in public ownership.
And the national grid will be in public ownership so that we can build the energy network we need for the twenty first century, according to the people motive instead of the profit motive.
And we will kick out that profit motive and the shareholder dividend from our National Health Service too.
We will honour the founding principles of the NHS – free at the point of need, paid for out of general taxation – which is not only being abandoned by the Tories who want to sell it off to Donald Trump.
It is being badly let down by an SNP Government which is failing patients, failing families and failing NHS staff as well.
So I tell you that the only Party that can save our NHS is the Party which founded it: the Labour Party.
In this General Election, our goal, my ambition is not merely to “deprive the Tories of their majority”.
It is to sweep the Tories out of power.
And it is to elect a new Government.
A new Government that will bring about fundamental and irreversible change in this society.
Based on the values of the helping hand in place of the iron heel.
Based on the values of equality and anti-racism not hate and division.
Based on the values of bread but the values of roses too.
So let us get the message out.
It is only the Labour Party that can form a new government in six days' time.
It is only the Labour Party that can get to work in Government in six days time.
It is only the Labour Party that can replace a rotten decade of austerity and cuts with a new decade of investment and democracy.
Only the Labour Party that can scrap Universal Credit.
Only the Labour Party that can deliver a Living wage, employment rights including trade union rights from day one.
Only the Labour Party that can deliver for the WASPI women and keep the free TV licence for the over 75s.
Only the Labour Party that can not just put together a public sector bid for Scotrail, but which can renationalise the whole bloody railway!
And let’s get the message out that the only way to get a Labour Government is to elect Labour MPs from Scotland.
There is no short cut to a Jeremy Corbyn government through any other Party.
So let us fight for every last vote, let us do it with renewed determination with new energy, drawing on our enduring socialist values.
And the ideas and idealism of co-operation , of equality and a burning desire to achieve socialism in our time.
Because I tell you that when people come together behind this great movement for change.
When we stand together, nothing and no-one can stop us.
And when Labour wins, Scotland wins.
Thank you.