***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

I can think of no more suitable place to be this morning that the People’s History Museum - 48 hours away from history being made by the people of this country in the EU referendum on Thursday.

This museum is a fantastic tribute to the proud tradition and heritage of the labour movement and it is the entire labour movement - party members, MPs, councillors like Sir Richard Leese and every major trade union - that is united in campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union.

Jo Cox was fighting with us until her brutal murder last Thursday. We mourn her loss and renew our efforts to create the kind of world she wanted to see - where tolerance triumphs over bigotry and hope triumphs over fear.

This museum was founded on the site of the Peterloo massacre in St. Peter’s Field when working people campaigning for parliamentary representation were killed and maimed by the dark forces of suppression.

That event reverberated down the years as working people formed trade unions to magnify their voice and trade unions formed the Labour Party to ensure it was heard in parliament.

Keir Hardie’s Labour Party was the first political party in this country to campaign for women’s suffrage. It was and is a party of internationalism and solidarity.

The stakes in this referendum are highest for those in our country that have the least. Those who need the protection that the social dimension of the EU offers through rights to paid holiday, rest breaks and control of working hours.

The agency workers directive and the Information Consultation Directive fought for not just by trade unionists in Britain but across our continent.

And it’s working people whose jobs will be placed in jeopardy if we leave, good high skilled well paid unionised jobs in manufacturing that will be amongst the most vulnerable as companies that have set up in Britain as a gateway to tariff free trade with Europe suddenly lose that access and look to find it elsewhere.

There are those who say that when the last referendum was held on membership of what was then the European Economic Community, we only voted for a Common Market. Not True.

I was a postman back then in 1975. I delivered the leaflets on both sides in that referendum. Here’s what the Yes leaflet said on page 4 in relation to what that vote was about:

“To bring together the peoples of Europe, To raise living standards and improve working conditions, To promote growth and boost world trade To help the poorest regions of Europe and the rest of the world, To help maintain peace and freedom.”

That vision is as relevant today 41 years later. Jeremy and I as baby boomers are part of the first generation of men who were not sent off to fight a war on European soil.

Two World Wars began on our continent in the first 40 years of the 20th Century. The House of Commons Library tell me there were 56 wars in Europe during the 19th Century and periodically for a 1000 years before, Europeans slaughtered one another as a way of settling their differences.

Since the European Coal and Steel Community was created out of the carnage of World War Two, in Churchill’s famous phrase, ‘Jaw-Jaw has replaced War-War’ and countries that hardly knew free speech, democracy and the rule of law have been welcomed into an institution where those rights are enshrined under Article 6 of its constitution.

Leaving the EU is not about gaining control, it’s about losing control and replacing it with turmoil and uncertainty.

This museum celebrates unity. Leaving the EU will condemn this country to the opposite as we walk off into self-inflicted isolation on our continent and in the world.

ENDS