Brendan Barber's Archive 
I’m General Secretary of the TUC, the 9th person to hold the position since its introduction in 1922. I’ve been with the organisation since 1975, working in different roles in industrial relations and communications, as well as Deputy General Secretary until 2003, when I was elected General Secretary by the TUC’s General Council. I’m responsible for the overall operation of the TUC, and for leading the implementation of policies set by our annual Congress and the General Council.
I studied at City University in London, and took a sabbatical year as President of the City University Students Union, as well as working for a year with VSO in Ghana. I’m a Non-Executive Director of the Court of the Bank of England, and have done turns as a member of the ACAS Council and of Sport England. The latter is close to my heart as I’m a keen supporter of Everton Football Club, though you’ll also find me occasionally at home games of Vauxhall Conference side Barnet, and when I get the chance I enjoy a round or three of golf.
Brendan Barber
None of the Chancellor’s post-election assumptions have turned out to be true. Growth has stalled, the Eurozone has crashed, the structural deficit bigger than thought and unemployment continues to rise as the private sector fails to take up the public sector slack.
The Chancellor’s stubborn determination to stick to his plan despite the evidence that it is not working and won’t work in the future means that we are locked into permanent austerity.
Brendan Barber
I’m giving a lecture at Liverpool University this evening, this is a slightly edited version of what I’m saying:
Tonight, I simply say to the Chancellor: Plan A isn’t working. We can’t go on like this. We need an alternative. And we need it now.
Let me set out the TUC’s vision for an alternative, a five-point plan to help get our economy on track and help get Britain back to work.
Brendan Barber
Last month, as our cities burned amidst the worst rioting in decades, social divisions in modern Britain were laid bare. The violence and the criminality that we saw shocked us all, and none of us would seek to justify or condone it in any way.
And the victims were overwhelmingly frightened ordinary people in working class communities – with the police and emergency service workers called on to put their safety on the line to restore order.
The Prime Minister chose to describe these events as ‘criminality pure and simple’. But it isn’t so simple and what happened in August actually revealed deep fractures within our society.
Brendan Barber
The Vickers team have been asked how to make the banks safe, but the real question is how we make them useful.
Tougher capital requirements and ring-fencing will be bitterly opposed by the banks, who will now lobby hard to water them down. They should be resisted.
But while we need to avoid another finance-driven crash, safer banking on its own will not help drive the investment and create the jobs we need. Indeed, unless we take other action tougher capital controls could even limit credit at a time when businesses complain they cannot get affordable loans.
Brendan Barber
Next week sees the TUC’s 143rd annual Congress in London, and a lot has happened since the union movement met in Manchester last year.
A year ago we were being told that everything was set for recovery. Yet here we are 12 months later facing a real prospect of a double-dip recession. Trying to eliminate the deficit in just four years can now be seen as nothing more than a national programme of self-harm.
It has killed both consumer and business confidence. With the cuts already putting the brake on government investment, the net result is that almost no-one is investing. Yet without growth there is no prospect of closing the deficit gap in the short, medium or long term.
Brendan Barber
Unions representing many public sector workers are currently engaged in complex negotiations with the government over changes to public sector pensions. Now is a pretty critical time in the talks, and Danny Alexander’s comments in the Telegraph and on the Today Programme this morning are extremely unhelpful.
Brendan Barber
It’s now over a year since the end of Britain’s most recent recession, but for many households the pain continues. In fact the financial hardship that some families currently face is greater than in the depths of the downturn. The Government’s own forecasts show that wages are going to trail behind inflation for several years to come, while household debt will continue to rise.
For those on middle and low incomes who were experiencing a wage squeeze before the recession even started, a return to business as usual is unlikely to bring any significant rewards. On the contrary, as stagnating wages are accompanied by tax rises and cuts in the benefits and tax credits available to working families life is set to become even more of a struggle.
The wages of middle income Britain have grown by an average of just 56% since 1978, despite GDP increasing by 108% over the same period. For workers in some skilled trades incomes actually fell in real terms between 1978 and 2008.
Brendan Barber
I’ve been at the O2 in Greenwich today, to speak to the Insitute of Directors (IoD) annual convention.
I always admire the way the IoD doesn’t pussy-foot around. They’re very clear that they don’t just back the spending cuts, but want more of them – and want them more quickly. But in their desire to see the deficit tackled in this way, they should be very careful what they’re wishing for.
The deep and rapid spending cuts are not just slicing away at the public sector, but doing big damage to the private sector too. The medicine doesn’t just taste nasty, its side-effects are making the disease worse too.
Brendan Barber
I’ve been at the EEF in London today, to give this year’s Warwick-ACAS Lowry lecture. I wanted to use the opportunity to talk about some of the myths underpinning the government’s programme of fast, deep spending cuts. Here’s some of what I said.
The TUC is no deficit denier. We know that borrowing one pound in every four we spend is unsustainable, and we agree that spending more on servicing debt interest than on educating our children is just plain wrong. What we need is a Plan B.
My concern is that the government’s answer – to slash public spending with reckless speed – is based not on a sound reading of the evidence, but on an ideological zeal to shrink the size of the state. The so-called reforms in the NHS and education threaten the fundamental character of our public realm.
This brutal austerity is being implemented on the back of a series of myths – half truths and distortions that have poisoned our public debate:
Brendan Barber
This is what I’ve just said to a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem Spring conference in Sheffield, where I’m sharing a platform with Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander:
I like to think that the TUC has developed good relations with the Liberal Democrats in recent years – of course there have been disagreements but also mutual respect.
Charles Kennedy addressed our annual Congress when he was leader, as my predecessor John Monks spoke to your Assembly. Chris Huhne addressed the TUC environment conference last October – and in turn I’ve been delighted to speak at a number of your fringe events.
That mutual respect has been based on a recognition that we share some basic philosophical roots and approaches.
Social Liberalism was a driving force behind the creation of the post-war welfare state of Keynes and Beveridge, but it also drew on important work done by the TUC on social insurance.
The social democratic tradition that helped regalvanise your party in the 1980s was the UK’s main advocate of what I would call the social Europe bargain – a key belief in today’s trade unions.
