History and politics

OK, how about a quick history test? (Don’t worry, not really a test!) What do all the following pieces of legislation have in common?

• The National Health Service Act 1946, which created the NHS.
• The Equal Pay Act 1970, requiring equal pay for male and female employees.
• The Race Relations Acts 1965, 1968 and 1975 which outlawed the ‘colour bar.’
• The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
• The Employment Protection Act 1975, which introduced Statutory Maternity Pay.
• The Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which outlawed sex discrimination.
• The National Minimum Wage Act 1998, which introduced a minimum wage for the first time.
• The Employment Act 2002, which introduced Statutory Paternity Pay.
• The Equality Act 2010, which consolidated and strengthened a range of anti-discrimination law.

The answer? All of them were passed under a Labour Government.

On the whole, the kind of laws which are brought in by Labour Governments improve the quality of our lives, while those passed by the Tories generally do the opposite.

Even the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was subject to repeated attempts by the Tory Government of John Major to block it, and finally became law due to a campaign spearheaded by disability campaigning groups outside Parliament and by the Labour Party inside Parliament.

I know that not all trade unionists back the Labour Party and some are active supporters of the Green Party or the Lib Dems. That’s fine by me – in fact, I would be happy to see one of those parties become the official opposition to a Labour Government! And most of us probably don’t think about politics all that much of the time.

But the fact is that many of the things that make our lives easier have been won through politics.

Are we going to lose them or continue to build on them?

That depends on politics.

And that is why it is so important that we, our colleagues, our clients and everyone we know get out to vote in the next election.

The last 14 years have not  been easy for most of us. If we want the coming years to be easier, we need a change of Government.