CORBYN WOWS BURSTON

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: october 2015 :: RMTnews 25 Over 3,000 people flocked to the annual Burston Strike Rally last month to hear Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn speak just days before he took the reins of the party. The North Islington MP, who began the contest as the outsider, won the leadership race with 60 per cent of the vote, beating frontbenchers Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall after a three-month campaign. Mr Corbyn said that he was always pleased to speak at the rally which celebrates the longest strike in history. In 1914 children marched out of their school when their much- loved teachers, Tom and Kitty Higdon, were sacked on trumped up charges because of their support for the farm workers’ union. The Higdon’s continued to educate children right up to 1939 despite opposition from landowners until Tom Higdon died 25 years after the strike began. “This is showing respect for the memory of the way the Higdons stood up for working class children and we should remember many of our rights and liberties were won by people who made brave stances in the past. “This is a massive educational exercise today and what fun it is too,” he said after completing the march retracing the steps of the route the children took – known today as the Candlestick – over one hundred years ago. Mr Corbyn paid tribute to other labour movement leaders that had spoken at the event in previous years including Tony Benn, Bob Crow and Joan Maynard. He went on to thank the trade union movement for their support in his leadership campaign “There have been huge attendances wherever we go and that’s because people are buoyed up by the idea that there is optimism about, we can do things differently, we don’t have to bequeath to the next generation greater poverty than this generation has. “We need to democratise our party and the movement in order to reinvigorate ourselves for the struggles ahead. “We need to send out the message there is an alternative to endless monetarism that is destroying our society,” he said. He said that it was the reckless banks that had created the crisis yet poor people were being expected to pay for it. “We say no more austerity, no more PFIs, no to the arms trade and no to an aggressive foreign policy. “We need a different agenda that the 36 per cent that didn’t vote in the last election can be galvanised to support,” he said. CORBYN WOWS BURSTON