Mick Lynch’s Jimmy Reid Memorial Lecture
Mick Lynch (left) and Allan McDougall's David Harris
Last Thursday (24 October 2024) Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) trade union, gave the 11th Annual Jimmy Reid Memorial Lecture in a packed-out Glasgow City Chambers.
Allan McDougall Solicitors‘ David Harris attended the event to represent firm. Reflecting on the lecture, David commented:
“Mick Lynch’s talk was inspirational. This is a man who can identify and clearly articulate the key issues of our life as a nation and the self-evident failures of successive governments to address the challenges which affect the lives of working people. (Even the following day’s press castigated the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, for using the phrase “working people” as if it were criminal to seek to promote the rights of the less well off.) Here was an unashamed socialist promoting the values of community as opposed to selfishness.
Mick Lynch said that the systematic selling off of the “family silver” by Thatcherite policies of both Tory and Labour governments persists and has become the norm. It is, he urged, to be resisted at every turn. The selfishness of privatisation needs to called out repeatedly. Anti-racism, the expansion of the role of women, gay rights and so on require working people to act positively and support people’s rights every day in order to turn the tide. The promotion of trade unions and the repeal of anti-union legislation will have to be fought for if working people are to benefit justly from their labours, he said.
This was old school street politics. And it is hard work, Mick Lynch said. The right is hard at work every day promoting its interests, and if the left is to succeed in lifting working people out of poverty, removing the need for food banks, banishing zero hours contracts, and promoting unionised workplaces and collective bargaining, then a lot more hard work needs to be done. He pointed to the manifest injustice of a society left to the whims of market forces and paid homage to the legacy of Jimmy Reid and others who took the struggle so eloquently to the country through the media. Those in precarious jobs, some isolated and perhaps stuck involuntarily at home post Covid, need to be energised to organise and unionise if working people are to protect their human rights.”
The Reid Foundation’s event had proven so popular that it had to be moved to a larger room. In addition to trade union activists, people of all ages and from all walks of life, had crowded into this bigger space. All of them gave Mick Lynch a heartfelt standing ovation and left Glasgow City Chambers informed, inspired, and energised.
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