CWU Respond To General Election Result

Responding to the General Election result, CWU General Secretary Dave Ward said:

"The election result heralds a change in the balance of forces in UK politics and there is no going back for Labour. Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership team deserve enormous credit for their resilience and for putting together a superb manifesto and campaign that brought Labour back home to working class people.

There is work to do and no doubt there will be lots of developments to take into account in the hours, days and weeks ahead. The CWU will support Labour in every possible way to put the manifesto into practice at the earliest opportunity. 

Jeremy Corbyn is delivering a different kind of politics – unions must now build on this and deliver a different kind of trade union movement.”

In a letter to all of the Union’s Branches, both senior officers, Dave Ward, GS and Tony Kearns SDGS thanked the membership for all their hard work over the last 6 weeks or so in helping to deliver this General Election result for Labour:

From the starting point in the polls, facing a hostile right wing press and a Tory party bankrolled by billionaires, last night was a hugely positive result for Labour that heralds a change in the balance of political forces in the UK.

Under Jeremy Corbyn it put forward the bold and optimistic agenda for change that this country needs. It energised young voters and hundreds of thousands of Labour and trade union members who got out on the street to campaign for it. This is the platform Labour wins from.

We want to thank all our reps and members for their efforts over the past eight weeks. The trade union movement itself needs to change to help deliver the shift in values that last night signals. We will be saying more about this in the coming weeks.

We want to congratulate our members who stood in the election: Julie Gibson, Matt Kerr and Chris Webb all fought great campaigns and increased the Labour vote; Hugh Gaffney for winning in Scotland with a massive swing; and James Frith for taking Bury North from the Tories.

Given the nature of the result there will be further developments over the coming days. As a union, we need to continue to connect our industrial and political agendas and to drive forward our work to deliver a New Deal for Workers and re-assert trade union values in this country. We will be saying more about our strategy for this shortly.

 

Source: CWU

Posted: 1st January 2017

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