Community: The Union for Life

Thank you Chair,

Conference, Joe Mann, Community, speaking in support of the composite.

Conference, I’m sorry that we’re addressing this issue today. We should have been talking about an industrial success story.

But our defeat in May means that’s not the case.

The ConDems have taken their hatchet to a prime industrial project.

A project that would have delivered 200 new jobs and secured many more.

A project that would have made the UK a world leader in the civil nuclear industry.

We’ve heard from the previous speaker about the effects this will have on Sheffield.

Forgemasters is a totemic issue.

If the Coalition had gone ahead with the loan it would have demonstrated a commitment to British manufacturing,

and shown the Government are prepared to drive essential economic growth through investment.

It would have been a hand up not a hand out.

But what they’ve done is just short-sighted and short-term penny-pinching.

Nick Clegg – a Sheffield MP – showed he was prepared, not only to sell his party down the river

but also the people of Sheffield who he’s supposed to represent.

This Coalition Government thinks that the private sector will miraculously rise up, phoenix-like, from the depths of recession – if only the public sector is cut back enough.

It just doesn’t make sense.

The Coalition thinks that cutting the research and science budget will maintain Britain’s cutting edge.

That doesn’t make sense.

And as for the coalition’s policy on nuclear power – facing two directions at once makes no sense at all.

Conference, our industry needs active industrial policy.

We must campaign with industry and manufacturing communities to hold the coalition to account.

And we must show that we have the alternative industrial policy that the country desperately needs.

We know that Labour would deliver for Sheffield.

We know that Labour would deliver for Forgemasters

And we know that Labour would deliver for our industry.

But we can’t do it from Opposition.

The campaign to take us back to power starts this week.

United, together, behind our new leader.

Support the composite.

Thank You.