WITH VIDEO: The surge in Labour membership since the election of Jeremy Corbyn has reached 30,000, the new leader told the TUC at its conference in Brighton today.
Mr Corbyn arrived at the Brighton Centre shortly after 2pm today, to a rousing welcome from scores of people, many of them members of the People’s Republic of Brighton and Hove.
As he arrived at the back of the centre, they chanted “Jez we can! Jez we can!” while camera crews and photographers looked on.
Addressing the TUC Congress shortly afterwards, he revealed membership of the Labour party was now more than a third of a million “and rising”.
And he said the challenge facing the party was now how to channel this so that it can win the next general election in 2020.
He said: “I’ve spoken at 99 events in 99 days, often very large, bringing people together who had been estranged from Labour and young people who had not been involved in that sort of politics before.
“There’s a sense of hope, sense of a way things can be done better.
“Labour must become more inclusive and open. The party and movement must be more democratic.
“We live in an electronic age where communication is much easier and quicker. We don’t have to have policy making which is top down from an all seeing leader who decides things.
“I want every member to have a say so that we develop organically the strengths and imagination we all have.
“If everyone’s involved in that policy making, they own that policy at the end. That way we don’t go through to 2020 with a series of surprises,
“We’re going to win in 2020 so we see the end of this Tory government.”
And his message to the Tories was also clear: “They call us deficit deniers, but then they spend billions cutting taxes for the richest families and most profitable businesses.
“They are poverty deniers. They’re ignoring the growing queues at food banks and the housing crisis. Let’s be clear, austerity is a political ideology which they are imposing on most vulnerable and poor in our society.
“Welfare reform is all about building on the cuts they’ve already made, making the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society even worse.
“I simply ask the question what kind of society are we living in where we regularly pass regulations which are making the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society even worse?
Who end up committing suicide and we say it’s all part of the normal process? No it is not!”
He also paid tribute to the trade union movement, which he described as the “largest voluntary organisation in the UK” with its six million members.
He said: “Unions are not just about the workplace, they’re also about society and life as a whole and the rights of the working class to have a voice in society as a whole.
“Trade unions are an essential part of modern Britain and I’m proud to be a trade unionist. We’re going to fight [the Trade Union Bill] all the way.
“And if it’s passed, when we’re elected in 2020 we’re going to repeal this bill and replace it with a workers’ rights agenda.
“It gives us the opportunity to defend civil liberties. Are we really going to have teams of civil servants, lawyers or police trawling through hundreds of Twitter messages to find something they’ve said about their employer or about the dispute?
“It’s a damage to the civil liberties of everybody in this society and they will use it as a platform to make attacks on other parts of our society.
“They’re also attacking the rights of trade unions to be involved in wider society. Why shouldn’t workers organised together in a union express a political view?
There he said almost what i been thinking
(the ONLY danger to this country are the parasites at number 10)