Joe

Here are the highlights of Salford Labour Students AGM 2012.

Our guest speaker was, leader of Salford City Council, John Merry. John delivered a fantastic talk on how with the help of us, we will keep the city of Salford Labour red when the mayoral elections come. He also talked about the achievement of Salford City council in the past year and how fantastic it has been for the city in growth and acknowledgement.

After John’s speech, we received the reports from the Chair, Vice-chair and Treasurer. 2011 – 2012 was a fantastic year for Salford Labour Students. The amount of members doubled, we went to both National Council and Conference with many delegates and created many friendships within the group. The best achievement of the year was receiving the Campaigning Club of the Year at National Council. We received £300 from the union, which we have been given again this year.

The time came to give out the Lifetime Membership Awards. This year we’ve had to say goodbye to many of our members: Joe Kirwin, Graeme Tierney, Tim Hulme, Ellen Watts and Stephen Mann. They will be greatly missed for all their support towards the society. However, two of these members stood out from the crowd and it was a pleasure to award Joe Kirwin and Graeme Tierney with Lifetime Membership awards to Salford Labour Students.

Your new committee for 2012 – 2013…

Chair – Daniel Walton
Vice-Chair – Dean Flanagan
Secretary – Amy Hughes
Treasurer – Ryan Towers
Women’s Officer – Amy Fairclough

To finish off a fantastic AGM we got some amazing photographs taken for the Union, here is everyone’s favourite:

First up was John Merry. John is the current leader of Salford City Council; he also has experience of being an NOLS and NUS officer. Stressing that this is the most important election Salford has seen in the past 40 years, John wants to show that even with the government targeting cities like Salford, Labour must persevere to win.

John Merry’s focus for this election is on social care and education. Firstly, social care: with a main focus of the elderly, John’s campaign aims to keep the best care for all social care categories. As leader of the Council, John has achieved this in Salford and aims to keep it that way.

Education: John’s goal for this city is, with the help of the Vice Chair of Salford University, to double the amount of people who go on to university from Salford. He has implemented this as Council leader and has almost reached his goal. He wishes to carry on this project.

Next to speak was Ian Stewart. Ian, originally from Glasgow, moved to Salford at the age of 12. Not a fan of school in Scotland, the English school experience was a great thing for Ian. Once leaving education at 14, Ian joined up to the Transportation and General Working Union.

With no academic achievements under his belt, a “triple Z student”, he joined the English and Maths classes offered to him by the Union and everything he has learnt has come through the movement. Ian, then, became one of the youngest ever to be made a full-time officer at the Union.

Even at seven-years-old Ian had political thoughts. When he moved into his first council house, it dawned that the council was a good thing. Ian believes that for the people of Salford, the Labour party is what they need in control. Their interests are interlinked with similar beliefs in what they want. However, Ian does admit that the party does need to engage its younger members more. With ward meetings in particular, Ian wants to make the party more welcoming and engage the ideas of the younger generations.

Last was Peter Wheeler. Salford born-and-bred, Peter joined the party at 16. Peter has worked for the party on many levels from new comer up to sitting on the National Executive Committee. Another area which Peter has had experience on is working for the engineers union on the side.

Peter is proud of what Salford has achieved over the years and wishes to see it continue. He expressed how politicians don’t understand how the world has changed. Many are set in their ways and don’t want to change with the people. With the current climate and insecurities such as; unstable Jobs, debt, prices of housing and mortgages the mayor has to step up to stop the anxiety of its city.

As Mayor of Salford, Peter’s main aim would be to engage, not internationally, but with the people of the city itself. Peter said: “Little Houlton is every little bit as important as The Quays.” He also mentioned how he wants to work with Salford Labour Students to help with the task force, keeping Salford Labour and to keep us, as students and graduates, in Salford and be an asset to the city.

Steve Carter, once leader of Macclesfield Borough Council Labour group, came to Salford Labour Students this week.

Steve Carter; a foot soldier for Labour. He stood in a safe conservative seat in both 2001 and 2005, both proving to be unsuccessful. He also stood for one of eight MEP seat, also proving unsuccessful, But this has never fazed him and he is now currently wishing to be successful by becoming a Police Commissioner for Labour, even though the idea is opposed by Labour themselves, we need Labour views to form a balance on the commission.

Now a teacher Steve started off by using an exercise, which he uses to illustrate the powerof communication before you try to stand for seats in council or in any form of election. The exercise consisted of us interviewing the person to our left for a minute. Steve used the example of when he was at his Labour group and he’d been sat next to one of the pioneers who fought for the freedom to roam the Pennines and never knew until 2 years on.

Steve started with the daunting fact that, is was not the generation who lived through the war who is lost, it is in fact ours. We are the lost generation:

1. Over 1 million young people are unemployed.
2. The cost of our education is £9,000
3. The age of the average son to leave home is now 30
4. The retirement age is on the rise, meaning this prevents us from finding work, and when we do, we’ll have to work until at least nearing 70.

Also, under the coalition, the £700 billion debt has now risen to £1 trillion, with even more cuts to be made.

Steve believes that ‘Broken Britain’ is not what Cameron sees it as. It is in fact the breaking down of the organisations such as the Police, Media and the Government. The Leveson Enquiry highlights this as the Media has now begun to consume itself, therefore proving this meltdown of the organisations.

A key point Steve made is that if we want to see change, the “Movement for Change”, we must use teamwork to achiever this.

Steve ended of the vital point of being true to yourself. This is what has given Steve the stamina to carry on even though he has been knocked many times, he has never given up and has stood again.

Follow Steve: https://twitter.com/#!/SteveCarter001

Mr Stringer started off by explaining how it was clear in the 1980′s that cities with such an industrial influence were not going to survive on its industry for much longer. This was the starting point for the regeneration of Manchester as a city and has made it was it is known for today.

With this regeneration a focus on university graduates was adopted. As many graduates from the Manchester universities and Salford university were migrating to London for jobs, Manchester lost a lot of its potential by its graduates leaving the city to other areas.

With this in mind, Manchester council created many new jobs and cultural achievements; one of which was holding the Commonwealth Games in 2002.

Graham Stringer added that a further way in which Manchester council attracted businesses, culture and graduates is through improving and. most importantly, increasing it’s transport links in and out of the city. This allowed commuters and business opportunities open up to the whole of the UK and the world.

As it stands, Manchester Airport currently had more international links to the world than Heathrow Airport. This shows how much Manchester has progressed globally in all aspects.

Stringer made it clear how much Manchester and it’s surrounding towns and cities has progressed in it’s status worldwide in the past 3 decades.

He also praised Salford University and it’s union in all that it does and all in all, Mr Stringer conducted a lovely meeting and we were very pleased to welcome him in.

In other society news, we’d like to wish our own Steve Mann good luck on his placement down in London. Mann tweets: “1 mans mission still isn’t bigger than the groups combined victories this year ”

Also, massive thanks to Graeme, once again, for being the quiz genius.

In conclusion, a very successful return in 2012!

Ken Lowe, Political Officer for the Union started off with explaining how GMB stretched out into CLP’s to show how the union is affiliated with Labour itself.

GMB aims to attract more young members to the union and to the socialist movement – as Ken believes, at the moment, that it has lost momentum and if no one does anything about then a generation of potential activists could be lost and is being left behind.

Without this momentum of young members, society and socialism will end up like in the time of Thatcher, where the youth will be oppressed.

Ken added that if GMB were able to get a great number of GMB youth branches, they would definitely organise conferences for us, where in fact we would be able to elect a delegate and then they would suggest policy for the GMB to act upon.

Ken stressed the importance of students needing to be protected whilst they’re at uni with part time jobs. GMB represents all its members, no matter what age in times of need and when their rights are breached.

Membership with GMB only costs 10p a week for phone advice line and 80p a week for the additional health support in the workplace.

GMB are not there for financial profit, they are purely there for support in return for activism in the union.

Neil Holden, Membership Development Officer at GMB, would like to build as many GMB branches possible, including Salford University.

Like Ken, Neil believes that socialism is on the decline and it needs to be reassured by members physically getting active and showing that the current state of government is not right.

However, GMB needs more in its youth sector, as out of the 3,000 members which it has in the north-west and Ireland less than 70 are under 27.

Neil also added that he would be more than happy to come back and help Salford University set up its own GMB branch, with a university status, so the official member minimum could be lower. This would be greatly beneficial to the students at Salford as they would now know their rights in the work place.

GMB covers all areas in the work place as it is a general union and therefore can appeal to everyone.

So, keep the lookout for GMB @ Salford hopefully appearing in the near future in the Union’s society list!

Also, we would all like to take this opportunity to congratulate our chair, Joe Kirwin, on his success at being elected as a NUS delegate for Salford University! A great thank you to all that voted and all those who campaigned for Joe’s sake. We all knew you could do it, Joe.

We were welcomed into The Imperial Hotel with individual passes and freebies courtesy of Unison. We all gathered in the Young Labour conference area for the morning greeting from Chris Webb, organiser and Iain McNichol, general secretary of Young Labour.

By November, 2011 there are a total of 4,000 young labour members and it has its biggest active membership yet.

There has also been a new campaign, proposed by Iain McNichol, due to be launched next year named ‘Access all areas’. This aims to spread Labour throughout the country. As it stands there are no Labour MEPs in the South-West of England; Access all areas hopes to overcome this.

Iain also added that Labour failed to support new councillors in elections, so their momentum was lost and they lost that seat in the next election. This is another area in which the ‘Access all areas’ campaign is going to help.

Re-founding Labour is another key policy of which the Labour party have proposed. Since the last general election, there has been an increase of 65,000 members to the Labour party. In this figure, one quarter of the 65,000 new members are of the age 27 and under. This could indicate that the new mass election vote could swing in Labour’s favour.

The highlight of the event was a 50 minute speech from Ed Milliband. However, before this, Ed addressed Young Labour alone.

In this address, Ed stated points about how important the members of Young Labour are to the re-founding Labour campaign. He stated that young people are the way in which parties renew themselves, with young people and fresh ideas.

Mr Milliband also stated that with the re-founding labour campaign, Young Labour has been given independence, with its own voice and choices. “To succeed, we need many voices” He added.

His last point in his address to Young Labour was that Labour needs to be the voice of hope with this current government. With one in five young people being unemployed, tuition fees rising to £9,000 and the loss of EMA and all the broken promises from this government,  Labour needs to give support and hope to those in need. Ed Milliband proposes that we tax the banker’s bonuses and invest the revenue in the young people of today.

Mr Milliband then gave his speech to the whole of the conference in the main hall of the event. He started off by stating how much of a failure Cameron was at the G2 summit this year. Ed could not believe how Cameron had gone to Summit and not created plan of how to get out of this recession. Mr Milliband said that this was a complete failure of leadership.

He then added to the comment which he mentioned in the address to Young Labour on how our communities are hurting. With the recent unemployment records, he said, makes him feel as if he’s back in the 1980’s with the closure of the pits. We need to make a difference; it really is the case of the one per cent versus the 99 per cent.

Ed stressed that if we see someone in the street who claims it would be the same under Labour, we must argue that it wouldn’t be the same under Labour at all. “We can make the difference.”

We are in a state where we cannot rely on financial services anymore. The banks should make it their duty to help small businesses get off the ground and thrive in their sales. Mr Milliband also stated how he will go by doing this. He wants to put a regular, every day worker at the top level of every job, so they are in touch with the people at regular level. As most CEO’s and other high ranking jobs do not know what it feels like to be at the bottom.

The 1980’s was the wrong ethic and this is what the current government are bringing back. We need to build a different economy for a better future and make it easier to hire people, not to fire them.

A strong point that Mr Milliband made that this current government is an utter disgrace to the NHS. They have destroyed our beloved healthcare system, which many countries strive to have.  This is not acceptable for the welfare of our society. We have to overcome oversity, but this is forgotten.

He ended his speech on the notes that we must never to fall to fatalism and this is not a conservative country and we need to stand up to it.

There were many points brought up in the Q&A section of the conference, but the strongest point which stood out that Mr Milliband made was that he could never promise anything to us, because he can only do as much as he can. For example, he can’t promise to lower tuition fees to lower than £6,000 because there is so much he can push into government at a time.

Overall it was a fantastic day at the conference in Blackpool and with this Salford Labour students would like to congratulate our members, Amy Coffey and Tim Miles on their appointments to the Young Labour Committee following the speeches and elections on that day.

This week’s meeting saw Tom Murphy, Secretary of Salford Co-op party, speak to the group. Tom, himself, was a former member of a Labour student society at Bristol University and he believes that “Labour student societies are an extension to the party.”

Tom opened with explaining his support for the Labour party and also its undercover successes in the past month.  One of these successes is the idea of the passage of gay marriage in Britain; which, in fact, was mentioned and proposed at the Conservative conference in Manchester last week. Tom stated that without Labour this action would not be possible. Which was supported with his notion that “we’re all in it for fairness and equality” which is a strong belief throughout the party and its history.

He then added the importance of campaigning. Campaigning is vital to a party and its members. If you believe in something then you should campaign for the cause. It’s only right and this weekend and next Thursday Salford Labour students will be canvassing and leafleting the Eccles area for the election on Thursday. Good look from us to Michael!

The main feature of Tom’s talk to us was about the foundation and meaning of the Co-op party itself. The co-op party is the sister to Labour. Although both parties are completely separate, every Labour member has the chance to join the Co-op party as well as the Labour party; with this there is a strong alliance in government of Labour Co-op members, including Ed Balls.

The history of the Co-op party stems from the 19^th Century, when Robert Owen suggested that business should be shared with the common people. With this, Own created a similar idea to the co-op by creating common share-holders and creating estates for his workers, which in fact are now going for £450 – 500,000 a house. Owen believed that everyone was entitled to good housing and by those prices; they were of the highest standard, even for the workers. Own believed in fair ness for all.

However, the Rochdale pioneers who founded the Co-op shops in 1844 developed the ideas of Owen, and created to Co-op that we know today. The first Co-op opened on Toad Lane, Rochdale and then later moved its headquarters to Manchester in 1864, roughly where the current tower stands today. Outside the tower is a statue of Robert Owen, who was the inspiration of the Co-op group’s foundations and beliefs.

Tom Murphy’s talk was an insightful and informative speech which has inspired many to join the Co-op party in harmony with Labour. We wish to see him again or at any event.

He also later joined us for the first instalment of the Pub Quiz, where Joe (Chair) flaunted his lovely pink jumper and shirt, in classic Miami Vice style. (Thanks to J. Winterbourne for that) However, this week the pub quiz was unsuccessful once again, but we shall not give up on the chance to win that crate!

It’s Thursday night and the Salford Labour Students gather in Boardroom 1 in University House for their first meeting. This, however, is not just a regular meeting; a special guest is also to arrive – Debbie Abrahams MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth. 

As the Chair of the society, Joe Kirwin, introduces himself to all the new and old faces the new members feel more at ease with their new colleagues. As 7.30 approaches, Joe tires his hardest to commence the ‘name game’ but party members refuse to play, but in the nick of time, Debbie arrives thanks to Daniel Walton, Secretary for Labour Students.

Debbie, a graduate from the University of Salford, sat down and beamed at the society looking bright, seeing she had just returned from the Labour conference in Liverpool earlier that day. The meeting commenced as she explained to us about some new developments and know how on what happened at the conference this past week. Most importantly the issues concerned with the NHS. As the society is mainly brought together by the member’s love for the NHS system, with some that want to go into the NHS so this greatly affects them. As Ed stated at the Conference this year “You cannot trust the Tories with our NHS.”

After Debbie’s fill on what happened at Conference 2011, it was time for the Q&A section of the meeting. As the new members took in all the information being exchanged, current members asked and expressed ideas with Debbie on issues which concerned them, from the NHS to speeches they actually heard at Conference 2011 from those who attended. All in all and insightful session was had by all after such a busy week for many. As the meeting draws to a close, members and Debbie head to Bar Yours for after meeting drinks and social time.

The first Labour Student’s meeting was a huge success with new members wanting to return each week. As the Labour Student’s society is not a place for steamed debates, if you want that, join the debate society.  It is a place for people who agree with Labour’s policies and interests with a warm, friendly feel. Feel free to come along to meetings which are held on Thursdays, 7pm in Boardroom one in University House.

If you have just signed up this year, welcome to the Labour Students group at The University of Salford. Below is all the information you need to get involved.

A Bit About Us:

We are the Labour Club at the University of Salford and part of Labour Students nationally, which in turn is affiliated to, but politically independent of, the Labour Party. We are a campaigning organisation, fighting for progressive values. Who seems to spend most of it’s time in the Union bar. Which has proven to be the best way to be more progressive! ………Honest!!

Meetings:

We have our weekly meetings in Boardroom 1 of University House on Thursdays at7pm. Come and join us anytime, whether you’re a regular or not, we always welcome new faces. Our meetings usually consist of a speaker, anyone from a local councillor to an MP. On our weeks off from a speaker we will have a relaxed evening usually consisting of a film or a pub quiz. Either way, we always end up at the bar eventually.

Campaigning:

We take part in campaigns at a local and national level. We have recently done everything from protesting against the rise in tuition fees in London, to leafletting for local councillors. If you have never done any campaigning we will be sure to show you the ropes so don’t worry about being thrown in at the deep end.

Trips:

We organise various trips all year round. These include national Labour Party and Labour Students events. As well as this we organise trips for just our club. Last year we took a trip down to the Houses of Parliament. We try to subsidise the trips as much as possible so don’t worry if you’re short of cash.