Speeches

In July, I spoke at an event organised by Islington Labour Party women’s forum, called ‘Keeping women and girls safe in Islington’. There were various speakers from community organisations, the council and the police, plus workshops on domestic abuse, sexual harassment, hate crime, gangs and bullying. My job was to speak about harassment and violence against women on public transport.

Seconding a motion from the University and Colleges Union (UCU) about the Disabled People’s Summit, I outlined the reasoning behind the text that RMT had added to the motion via our amendment. The motion (incorporating the amendment) was passed unanimously.

This is my proposing speech for TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee’s emergency motion calling for action to stop cuts to funding for kids with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Several trade unions’ delegates spoke in support of the motion, which was passed unanimously.

Conference, I am going to tell you:

The final motion at this year’s TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference was on Learning Disability. As this is an important and neglected issue, and the motion made some good points, it was clearly going to pass. However, I thought it important to point out some problems with it. Contributions to the debate were limited to three minutes, so this is probably more blunt and less nuanced than it might have been!

Listen to Janine speaking at Momentum's The World Transformed event at Labour Party conference on 24 September 2017.

At this year's RMT AGM, I spoke in favour of a resolution from the union's Disabled Members' Conference calling on the union to adopt the social model of disability. The resolution was passed unanimously. This is what I said.