Angela Rayner Speaks At CWU Conference 2026

 

With an introduction from CWU General Secretary, Dave Ward, Labour MP Angela Rayner; addresses CWU conference:

 

Dave Ward welcomed Angla to the conference, saying:

 

"It's been an eventful few days for the Labour Party to say the least. And as I said in my opening address on Sunday, it appears to a lot of people in the country that the Labour Party is making a disconnect from working class people. And as you know, Conference, we're going to have a proper discussion around our political strategy going forward and our relationship with the Labour Party immediately after lunch.

 

And we've put at the centre of that strategy the need to stand up for working class people. And I said the other day, that is our priority, with or without Labour in that sense. But one person in the Labour Party who definitely understands the needs of working class people is Angela Rayner.

 

Angela started out as a care worker. She went on to join Unison and became one of the senior officials in the North West for Unison before she then became an MP, being elected as the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne. Angela, as you also know, has served as Deputy Prime Minister under two Labour leaders.

And perhaps her most prominent thing that she's done for working class people, and I can vouch for this as other trade union leaders will also attest to, is that when it came to the New Deal for Workers, when it came to pushing that through Parliament, we have to be honest here, there were some in the Labour Party who didn't want that bill to go through in the way that it ultimately did. And there's some in the Labour Party now who seek to water that down. Angela Rayner was the person who advocated for that bill, probably as strong as anybody in the movement, in her position.

 

She made sure that we were regularly informed on it, and we had some very interesting discussions. And Angela Rayner always stood by the trade union movement during that period. She's also very supportive of the need for council housing, and in her current role, picks that remit up.

Now look, we're at a point where we're going to talk about what our relationship is. But I think it's really important that we hear from somebody today who is definitely a working class woman, a strong working class woman, who's had a lot of challenges and overcome them in her life, and I know that she does stand for working class people. So without any further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce Angela Rayner to address conference."

 

Angela spoke enthusiastically as she often has done on previous visits to the CWU's Conference:

 

"Thank you Dave for that introduction, and thank you for inviting me here today. It's a privilege to be amongst friends, united in our commitment for a better future for our country. I pay tribute to every rep and activist working towards that goal.

 

And it's been a bruising few days, not just because of the politics, but I did a tough mudder, so if you've seen the bruises, it's not because somebody has tried to lamp me one, it was because I was crawling through mud over the weekend. But no matter what is happening on our TV screens or 100 miles up the road in Westminster, you have always been a powerful advocate for workers' rights. Conference, as Dave says, this has not been an easy moment.

 

Our party has suffered historic defeats. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats. People who gave everything for their communities that they represented.

 

And it's clear that what we're doing isn't working, and it needs to change. As activists heard on the doorstep up and down the country, the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it.

Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now see the oil and gas companies using global instability to post record profits. And once again, working class people are paying the price for the decisions that they didn't make."

 

"It's no wonder that across the UK, people feel that the system is rigged against them, and the Labour Party must now live up to its name. We must be the party for working people. The Prime Minister today acknowledged the frustration that was expressed last week, but we will be judged on actions and not just our words.

 

I'm proud of our Labour values, but they're not enough if we do not have a plan to put them into practise. It's right that this motion sits at the very start of our conference. As the motion says, technological control is the defining struggle of our age.

 

We can only prove we mean our Labour values by putting the common interest ahead of factionalism. And we can start by accepting that Andy Burnham should never have been blocked. It was a mistake that the leadership of our party should put right.

 

Conference, we have to show that we understand the scale of the response that the moment calls for. By rejecting factionalism, uniting our movement, apologising for our mistakes, but learning from our successors too. Conference, we must make politics work for ordinary people.

With an economic agenda to make people better off. Change how we run our party and how we do politics. Labour exists to make working people better off.

 

And that is not happening fast enough. And that needs to change now. Conference, the trade union movement taught me that if you have strong values, if you work collectively, you can get things done, no matter what you're up against.

 

Conference, our movement, the trade union movement, the Labour party, is not just a political alliance, it's a family. And in families, you have your ups and downs, and we have our scrapes. But we look out for each other, and in the end, we're always there for each other.

And it was the Tories that wrote me off and said that kids like me were getting pregnant to get a council house. Thank everybody for their contributions. When I was young, I was scared, I was frightened, and I was looking for opportunity.

 

And it's thanks to our Labour family that I was able to improve my life, and the lives of my fellow workers, who I represented as their trade union rep. Our Labour family, our union family, gave me those opportunities. You were there for me, and proved that kids like me deserve better than that. And I wouldn't be stood in front of you today if it wasn't for our movement. I may have been born in Stockport, but I was raised in the trade union movement. It was our union family that gave us a new deal for working people.

 

It wasn't created in an ivory tower by politicians, it was delivered in collaboration with you, the trade union movement. And it will be delivered with you. Let me say this, there is no way that we would have had the new deal, nor the Employment Rights Act, nor the rest of the plan to make work pay, without affiliated unions like the CWU in the Labour Party.

 

Conference, it is testament to the strength and the importance of the link. But I know that families also have disagreements. Our Labour family is no different, and it's right that we're honest about them. I know you'll always push us to do more, and be better, and we won't always agree about every dot and comma. But I don't need to be persuaded that tweaks won't fix the fundamental challenges that our country faces. This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people's lives better.

 

We need to work together, so I urge you to support it. Thank you. Because we know that things can be so much better than this.

We do need to pass this motion, and we do need to move on, and we do need to work together, so I urge you to support it. Thank you. And we need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. And in my patch, and across the North, we lost working people whose wages are too low, and the costs are too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer.

 

Conference, for too long, governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top, without a plan to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result has been an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in the past few hands. The level of inequality, alongside Queen's living standards, we have to have a model built on deregulation and privatisation, to trickle down economic.

 

But we have a chance to fix this. Apple found that. It does the call for moratorium on super-intelligence development. And even Bill Gates, concerned that AI could evolve beyond human control. So, Conference, it's not tying us down to the answers to this, but we do need to pass this motion, and we do need to move on, and we do need to work together, so I urge you to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. This is the third step in the plan to make work pay. And now's the time to take the next step with a fair pay agreement and social care. But it mustn't end there, Conference.

 

A plan to get young people back into work. Good jobs that pay decent wages. And as we've seen last week, we're up against another party, claiming to be for working people. Let me tell you, Conference, when I was introducing our Employment Rights Act, that gave millions of workers a pay rise, protections from unfair dismissal, and an end to exploitative zero-hour contracts, none of it would have happened without the union and the Labour Party.

 

But, Conference, reform voted against it every time. And by the way, the Greens often stood in our way too. Populists and nationalists are not parties for the working class. It is only Labour that can protect you at work, rebuild our estates, make sure that we have the council homes that we need, end no-fault evictions, bring down waiting lists and feed our kids. We've had snake oil salesmen before, and we know we can see them off if we stand and fight for our values together. Our Labour values of equality, of social justice and fairness, to get people to follow us and make this country better.

 

The late John Prescott used to tell me, you've got a voice, kid, use it. A union man to his core, John would have relished this fight. It's a fight that you are all part of. He had the courage to set out his stall and persuaded people to follow it. He'd be fighting back for what he believed in, a bold vision for a better country. And we have to do exactly that. In each generation, it's fallen on a Labour government to strengthen the hands of working class people. And the task of this generation is to do that again, to fight back for the soul of this country. And we can only do that with our union family, our Labour family, fighting for the same cause.

 

So conference, let's do it together."

Source: CWU