Hi, I’m Josh Barclay the political officer for the Great Western branch. 

A little bit about me, I’m on the national team that looks after Openreach, and from the CWU perspective i do this role as young worker. 

I have always been very keen on politics. Trade unions and politics are of course very closely intertwined. The labour party was founded by trade unions over 100 years ago. Our union, the CWU is the fifth largest affiliated trade union to the Labour Party, with over 166,000 of our members opting to pay the political levy which goes towards our political campaigning. 

A question I get asked a lot is, why are we affiliated to the Labour Party and not any other political party? Well as stated earlier trade unions founded the Labour Party and it is still our belief that the Labour Party should work for working people and that is who our members are, of course  Labour are a very different Party to what they were many years ago, and we may not always agree on what they do, but it’s our job as a trade union to hold the party to account. 

It is important for trade unions to have a political voice to be able to push the agenda for working people.

The conservative party and others like it have no interest in bettering the lives of working people. 

In my role as political officer, it's my job to be in contact with local CLP’s and local Labour officials to be able to network and to push our members interests into the political sphere. 

If you have any questions about the political levy or about politics and trade unions in general, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me.

Contact number - 07708 475535

Email- joshcwu@gwestern.co.uk

If you don’t currently pay the political Levy and are interested in doing so please email the following address with either your membership number or your postal address. 

politics@cwu.org

Thank you.