The MU attends the Labour Party Conference annually to speak about the issues facing musicians and to vote on motions that form the basis of Labour policy. Image credit: the MU.
In her speech, Naomi highlighted the failures of successive Conservative governments and the change Labour is bringing to improve the lives of working musicians.
The Labour Unions rally took place at Labour Party Conference 2024, which the MU attends annually to speak to MPs and delegates about the issues facing musicians and to vote on motions that form the basis of Labour policy.
Making your voice heard at the highest level
The rally rounded off a packed first 24 hours of the Labour Party Conference, including meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Foreign Secretary David Lammy alongside other Labour-affiliated unions.
Naomi and MU Head of Government Relations & Communications Isabelle Gutierrez also met with Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy and Minister for Culture Chris Bryant.
Other MPs the union has met with include Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd), Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole), Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme), Katie White (Leeds North West) and Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge).
Many more have stopped by the union’s stand in the exhibition hall to share their support for members.
Naomi’s speech in full
I want to take you back for a moment to our experiences of the Conservative Government.
Their botched Brexit “Deal” which meant that our musicians who worked in the EU prior to Brexit lost 75% of their bookings and income from working in Europe.
The ministers told us, “Don't worry! We understand the musicians need to tour! We’re going to solve that problem for you and it will be in the trade agreement.” And when the Trade Agreement arrived, there was nothing in there for our members.
I'll take your back to the pandemic, when musicians were out of work completely.
We never thought we'd be in a situation where musicians had no work whatsoever. There was no live music, there was no work going on in the studios, there was no face-to-face music teaching and our members - 40% of them - didn't qualify for government support.
We’ve had musicians who teach music moved over years from employed terms and conditions and proper teachers pensions to zero hours contracts and insecure work. It's not good for teachers, andd it's not good for kids who want to learn music in schools.
It's a postcode lottery if you want to learn music. It depends where you live and if your parents have got private wealth, whether you actually learn music in private schools. So that's the Conservatives.
When we went to one of their secretaries of state for Culture, Media and Sport - and believe me, there were many, it was difficult to keep up - we said, “Can we have a meeting?” And what we got back was our letter with the word “NO” scrawled on it and sent back to us in the post.
That was the experience that we had as a union with 35,000 members trying to talk to the Conservative government.
Now what have we got? Well, we've got Rachel Reeves talking about fixing the problems for musicians touring in Europe.
We've got Bridget Phillipson talking about broadening the curriculum so that all children have access to music and the arts in our schools.
We’ve got Lisa Nandy as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport talking about the importance of arts being everywhere, believing in touring and believing in audiences having access everywhere.
We've got Chris Bryant who believes in buying physical music because he understands that music streaming doesn't make money for musicians.
We have a Prime Minister who studied music to secondary level. He actually plays a musical instrument, and we know that he's very passionate about access to the arts as well.
Finally, we've got Angela Rayner, our Deputy Prime Minister. She partied in Ibiza, she was DJing, she went to Glyndebourne and she got a load of stick for it. Apparently she's not “posh enough,” which tells you everything you need to know about the right wing press.
And of course, we've got Angie's New Deal for Working People, which is going to change all of our members’ lives and fix so many of the problems that we have as unions trying to organise our members.
So this is the change that we needed. This is the change that our members needed, and the change has started. Let's do it together.
The MU at Labour Party Conference
The MU is one of 11 trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party, affiliating 10,000 members – or just under a third of the union’s membership.
This gives us vital opportunities to advocate for the issues you care about, including fixing music streaming, access to music education and arts funding.