Gerald Kaufman a role model to us all ....
Gerald Kaufman 77 this year and still one of the best parliamentarians around. Here is an article he did for the January's North West Labour rose:

Ten continuous years of Labour Government – sounds simple, doesn’t it ? Yet until theparty came to office on that astonishing day, 2 May 1997, we hadn’t ever had a
Government for more than six years nor ever won more than two elections in succession,nor ever governed for two full Parliaments.. And until that golden day in May we hadn’thad a Labour Government at all for 18 years.

Now, it is easy to take our party’s decade in power for granted, just as it is easy to take for granted, or even forget, some of our most notable achievements. Remember the Tory ban on trade unionism at GCHQ ? We scrapped it immediately. Remember the Tories’ Primary Purpose rule, which made it almost impossible for spouses to get visas to join their partners here from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and other countries ? Labour got rid of that right away, and instituted rights of appeal against refusal of visitor visas as well.

Remember the Tories’ warning that a National Minimum Wage would cause even greater job losses than the mass unemployment created by the Thatcher and Major governments ? We brought it in, fulfilling a commitment in the days leading up to and on polling day in making sure we get our Labour voters to actually vote first made by Labour as long ago as 1906. It goes up steadily. And more people are in jobs now than at any time in our country’s history. In the North-West alone, over 3 million are in work, an increase of 6 per cent under this government.

The Tories and their running-dogs, the Liberal Democrats, want us to forget how they voted in Parliament against the Windfall Tax on privatised industries that helped to finance the New Deal, which has slashed youth unemployment and funded other valuable projects. Police jobs are up, as well, with a record number of lads and lasses in blue in the North-West and government spending on the police in our region up by 9 per cent.

Remember when we didn’t even have a Department of International Development ? The Tories abolished Harold Wilson’s Ministry of Overseas Development and gave the post, such as it was, to a junior Foreign Office Minister. Now our International Development cabinet Secretary of State leads the world in help for developing countries, with spending up a massive 121 per cent - and that is taking inflation into account.

Remember when we had to pay to go into museums and art galleries ? Labour scrapped the charges, and now more Britons than ever before are taking advantage of these marvellous facilities. Since we won in 1997, I raise this now, just to remind people what it was like under the Tories as compared to our Labour government spending on the arts is up 68 per cent, and on sport up by 81 per cent – again allowing for inflation.

Remember the Tories’ anti-gay Section 28 ? Gone, with the age of consent reduced to 16 and civil partnerships now taken for granted.

Tony Blair, when he took over Labour’s leadership, chanted the mantra: Education, education, education. Labour has kept its word. In my Gorton constituency, teachers used to combat for their pupils’ attention against rain coming through the roof. Again allowing for inflation, spending on school building under Labour is up by 145 per cent, and total spending on schools has risen by 65 per cent. Spending on higher education is up by 44 per cent. The results? Nationally, the numbers in higher education are up by 26 per cent. In the North-West, the number of primary school pupils in classes of over 30 is reduced from 242,764 to 95,541 – and still falling. And those kids are getting a better diet as well.In our region, 278,500 get free fruit and vegetables every day.

And under-fives are getting their biggest boost ever, with over 800.000 children with access to over 1,000 children’s centre services, and more than £2 billion going to something that never existed before May 1997, and, but we have seen record levels of investment in health, in transport, record levels of people in work like so many other Labour achievements, is now taken for granted. Sure Start’s the name of the fantastic project that didn’t exist ten years ago. At the other end of the age spectrum, neither did the £200 annual Winter Fuel Payment. Nor free bus travel, as a national project, for pensioners. We in the Labour Party have a proud record in Government. The problem is many people have short memories and have forgotten the disaster that was the Tory years of 1979 to 1997.

And pensioners benefit too, from free annualflu jabs, an amazing project accepted now as a matter of course – all part of the billions upon billions of extra spending on Labour’s National Health Service, with waiting lists slashed and lots more records still to be broken.

Yes. We can regard these 10 years as just the start if we stay united, maintain and strengthen our resolve, and go forward determined for a fourth successive Labour victory. We have achieved much. We can and will achieve  ¶ 5:26 pm