STUC General Secretary Grahame Smith discusses the aftermath of the EU referendum at STUC Conference Youth Conference on Sunday
THE STUC General Secretary has said that the result of the EU referendum has “produced a deep-seated belief among large parts of the population that their concerns have simply been ignored by politicians and political institutions”.
Grahame Smith made the comments in his address to the STUC Youth Conference on Sunday, and said he felt that the “writing was on the wall” on ending UK membership of the EU.
Smith went on to tell the conference that the UK population was concerned about the austerity that was forced upon the working poor as a result of “the lack of progress in reforming the financial institutions that caused the crash and the consequent recession, the decline in real wages and living standards, the rise in poverty and inequality, the vilification of the poor and the failure to curb excessive executive pay and bonuses, tax avoidance and evasion”.
Smith went on to tell the conference that “the Westminster first past the post electoral system has meant that for decades the votes of working class communities have made little difference to the outcome of elections”.
Smith went on to tell the conference that “the Westminster first past the post electoral system has meant that for decades the votes of working class communities have made little difference to the outcome of elections”.
Smith added: “That they vote Labour has been taken as given.
“That UKIP has chipped away at some of this ‘traditional’ Labour vote should have rung some alarm bells. If it did, they weren’t heard and if they were it probably wouldn’t have mattered.”
The result of the of the EU referendum showed that large sections of working class areas in England voted to leave the EU.
Even though cities like London, Manchester and Liverpool all voted to remain part of the EU, towns nearby these cities voted to leave.
Later in his speech, Smith attacked the Leave campaign for having “cynically and ruthlessly exploited the genuine concerns of working class voters”.
Places like Barking and Dagenham, Salford and St Helens all voted to leave the EU, by 62.44 per cent, 56.81 per cent, and 58.02 per cent respectively.
Later in his speech, Smith attacked the Leave campaign for having “cynically and ruthlessly exploited the genuine concerns of working class voters”.
Smith added: “EU migrant workers were used as scapegoats for the UK’s obvious economic shortcomings and a cover for the unwillingness of the likes of Gove and Johnson to admit the failure of the neo-liberal, austerity-driven, tax-cutting, deregulating policies that they support and that have had such a devastating impact on working class communities.
“As leading Leavers now admit, after Brexit, access to the single market will inevitably be accompanied by the continuation of the free movement of people. Voting Leave was never going to mean the repatriation of Polish or Romanian workers or no more Syrian refugees.
“That rightwing Leavers stayed silent, and by doing so allowed such vile attitudes to fester, should be forever to their shame.”
Later in the conference, SNP’s Chris Stephens MP mentioned in his speech that the “Ukip poster a week before the EU referendum was vile”.
Later in the conference, SNP’s Chris Stephens MP mentioned in his speech that the “Ukip poster a week before the EU referendum was vile”.
Stephen added: “I was glad that Unison – the trade union that I am proud to be a member of – took that matter to the police because my view is that the poster was a hate crime.
“Hate crime has risen since the outcome of the EU referendum, and all of us need to tackle that issue.”
A week before the EU Referendum, Ukip leader Nigel Farage unveiled a Leave EU poster that showed a queue of mostly non-white migrants and refugees with the slogan “Breaking point: the EU has failed us”.
The poster was reported to the police by David Prentis of the Unison union, stating that the poster was a “blatant attempt to incite racial hatred”.
Picture: David Thomson
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