TWENTY-FIVE years ago the TUC was cut short by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

The attacks shocked the world. The reaction to them would lead, in due course, to the forever conflicts of the “war on terror,” the illegal attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, extraordinary rendition and torture, restrictions on civil and protest rights.

Articles in Friday’s Morning Star looked at how those consequences played out, and have shaped the dangerous world we live in today. That was all to come, of course, as delegates at the TUC in Brighton heard the news.

Then-prime minister Tony Blair was actually at the TUC when it broke — cancelling his planned speech (a defence of the expansion of private-sector provision in public services, whose lamentable consequences have featured at many subsequent TUCs) for a short statement on the atrocity before returning to London. Then-TUC president Bill Morris announced cancellation of the rest of the Congress, too, shelving debates in which Blair’s plans would have been savaged.

What did it feel like at the time? Two of those working at the Morning Star today, present at that TUC 25 years ago, look back.

BERNADETTE KEAVENEY

ON THE morning of September 11 2001, the Morning Star edition carried a notice asking sellers to meet Kevin Halpin outside the Brighton conference centre at 8.30am.

That was why I was in Brighton. I had been at the paper for just under a year, and it would have been my first TUC Congress. Living close enough to Brighton, I was able to travel down each day to help. Along with selling the paper, the team’s focus was selling tickets for the Morning Star social. The social, organised by Ivan Beavis, was always a big attraction, but he would fret about whether enough tickets would be sold to break even, never mind make a welcome profit for the Fighting Fund.

It was while driving back from Brighton to Crawley, listening to Steve Wright on Radio 2, that I first heard about the attacks on Washington and New York, and the crash of another plane in a field. It was a surreal moment. I wasn’t sure whether what I was hearing could really be true.

I was due to go back to Brighton to help at the social, but the question was whether it would still go ahead. Many delegates and visitors had already left Brighton, many simply wanting to be with family and friends, especially those worried about relatives in the US.
Ivan was talking to delegates and comrades to get a feel for what we should do: proceed with the social or cancel it. Eventually it was decided to carry on.

Those delegates who remained wanted somewhere to go, to talk and to let off steam, and we would be one of the few places open to them. It was a good night. Psycho-Ceilidh, with a band called Neck, were brilliant, and the social was what people needed that night.

The following day we were back out on the seafront selling the paper. It was awkward: we were the only paper not leading on 9/11, and business was not brisk.

The editorial team had decided to run a trade union-commissioned wraparound, which meant the main paper was hidden behind it. The Morning Star reported in its September 13 edition that Congress had finished early on the 12th, a day earlier than planned, in solidarity with the people of the US.

ROGER McKENZIE

THE Trade Union Congress of 2001 in Brighton barely took place.

At the time I worked for the TUC as its race equality officer. I had gone through all the well established steps that all policy officers of the TUC are required to do in the run-up to Congress well before I led the organisation’s delegation to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

The Congress president that year was Bill Morris, then general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union.

This was a significant moment for me and many others for the symbolism of the leading black trade unionist in the country presiding over Congress.

He was, at the time, I believe, the only black general secretary of a TUC-affiliated union.

But just ahead of a speech by Prime Minister and soon to be war criminal Tony Blair during Tuesday’s session, Morris announced that planes had flown into the World Trade Centre towers in New York City and that it was believed to have been a terrorist attack.

Blair then spoke of the attacks “within the last hour or so, including two hijacked planes being flown deliberately into the World Trade Centre.”

During his brief contribution Blair said: “This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today.

“It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.”

Words that he seems to have forgotten or ignored as he takes part in US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace which is essentially attempting to build a swanky new Mediterranean resort on the dead bodies of thousands of Palestinians.

Blair said he would not deliver his planned speech and left Brighton for London to begin his career as a war criminal.

It was soon announced that the remainder of Congress was to be cancelled. Seemingly, any talk of anything other than the horrific events that took place in New York was being disrespectful — a decision it was not mine to make or comment on at the time but something I have never really understood.

What I do remember is the journey back home from Brighton to London and constantly watching the by now eerily empty skies as, if I remember correctly, all air traffic had been suspended.