The full text of TUC president Sir Tony Young's opening address to the Congress in Blackpool.

"It was seven years' ago that my predecessor as Congress President, Leif Mills, made much of the fact that he was the first president of the TUC to have graduated from Balliol College, Oxford. Thus demonstrating, as he almost put it, that his old college was able to reach parts of the British establishment other colleges could not touch.

In that same spirit, I am proud to announce today that I am, to the best of my knowledge, the first President of Congress to have been educated at Harrow.

And lest there be any misapprehension about my class credentials, let me make it clear that I refer of course to Harrow County Grammar School, followed, I should add, by Willesden Technical College.

I use the term "educated" in its broadest sense, having left "Harrow under the Hill", as we called it, aged 15 with sufficient skills in numeracy to know that the number of O levels I had achieved was the only whole number less than one.

Had you told me at that time that I would end my career entitled, indeed obliged, to be called 'Sir', I would have been surprised that someone with so few qualifications could be associated with the teaching profession.

Knighthoods were not too common in our part of North West London.

How things have changed.

As those of you who have read the Congress Guide will know, following my formal education and after a brief and unhappy experience in the non-unionised part of manufacturing industry, I joined the GPO and, as a result, the Post Office Engineering Union.

The trade union movement reached out to me and we have been together ever since.

Which leads me to the main theme of my remarks to you this morning and the main theme of our Congress this week. 'Reaching out' - or, to put the thought more fully, 'how can we reach out beyond the current confines of the trade union movement and make a greater impact amongst those who know little or nothing of how unions can improve life at work?'

Like many people of my generation I joined a union because that is what my workmates did.

You worked in a union environment so you joined the union. That was the way the world was. There might be some stroppy types around who needed some persuasion, but most of us saw the benefits of sticking together in a collective organisation committed to looking after our interests, especially when those interests did not necessarily coincide with those of our employer.

Today there are still a few workplaces like that around.

Some of you might work in them. Some of you might be working hard to maintain that deeply engrained union culture.

But sadly, particularly in the private sector, despite the growth in the number of workplaces where unions are recognised since 1997, today those places of work are the exception rather than the rule.

And so I believe that the fundamental task facing the trade union movement today is to make ourselves as relevant to the generation entering the world of work now as it was to the generation that entered that very different world of work forty and fifty years ago.

This is no new challenge, unique to our generation.

It is the same challenge that has faced every generation of trade unionists from the time that our nineteenth century predecessors combined together in defiance of over-mighty employers.

Like all membership organisations we recruit the next generation or the organisation dies with us.

But what we need to understand is that the context in which we face that challenge is very different today from that faced by that POEU member who persuaded me to add the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to my reading list and to get along to a union meeting rather than spending my spare time in the coffee bars of 1950s Edgware.

Today we live in a different world. Society has changed and certainly coffee bars have. Today we live in a multicultural, multiracial and more fragmented world.

Gone are the days when we all watched the same television programmes; worked nine to five and a half-day on Saturday and enjoyed our Sunday lunch with the family, before facing the choice of the garden or a walk.

The world of work has changed a lot.

Those factories eager to take on 15 and 16-year-olds without a qualification to their name have gone.

The Post Office no longer hands out apprenticeships to lads or lasses who, in the words of the reference I was given from my first job 'left after a disagreement with another employee' (fortunately for me they did not mention that the 'other employee' was the foreman).

This is a world where there are more women workers; more people with qualifications; less uniformity; and, of course, more rapid change and less predictability.

Yes it is all change. But not always in the ways that are predicted by those who set themselves up as experts.

They said that digital technology would change our lives, but they did not forecast the digital divide that is threatening to split society between the digital haves and have nots - a divide which my union, the CWU, is now seeking to bridge through its 'demand broadband' campaign.

They told us about the information revolution, but they did not tell us that the dot com bubble would burst.

They said that more of us would be able to work away from our offices, but they did not tell us that inter-city trains would be turned into open plan telephone booths on wheels.

They praised the flexible workforce, but did not tell us we would have to bend over backwards to meet the conflicting demands of work and family.

And still they can't explain why, in the global market, the bosses' salaries have to be compared with those paid by top US companies and production line workers' pay compared with that given to employees in China and Indonesia.

Yes it is all change. But there are some constants.

Manufacturing does still matter. We still want public services that meet public needs and not those of some profit-driven conglomerate. We want a Post Office that continues to provide a high quality national service delivering mail anywhere in the country, on the same basis, the following day, as it has done for more than a hundred years.

We want pension schemes where the employer does not take a holiday when the stock market rises and bails out when the market falls.

We expect high moral standards amongst those that we trust to take charge of the businesses on which our livelihoods depend.

And we want justice for all pensioners. It is not acceptable that pensioners who fought to keep this a free and democratic country should face poverty in old age.

The question which we need to answer, collectively as the TUC, and individually as affiliated unions, is how do we make ourselves relevant to the way in which our members and potential members live their lives now in this new world, with its new dangers and its new opportunities.

The concept of equality, equal rights and equal opportunities, lies at the heart of my trade unionism. It has guided me through all my work for the union, as a voluntary officer and as a professional negotiator and official. And it is to the concept of equality that I turn now in looking for the answer to that question which I have posed: namely "how do we reach out to today's workers?".

I was proud to have been a member of the Stephen Lawrence Task Group, established by the TUC in the wake of the inquiry into the death of South London teenager whose racially motivated murder led to the most far-reaching examination of racism in this country and in our national institutions - including unions.

I am proud of my own union's initiative in conducting an independent audit into how we are delivering equality.

Last year we amended the TUC rules to make it one of our principal objects to promote equality for all and to eliminate all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination, both within our own structures and through all our activities, including our own employment practices.

We also made it a requirement of affiliation that each organisation has a similar clear commitment to equality, in theory and in practice.

Over the past year we have begun the process of equality auditing. A questionnaire will be circulated to unions in the autumn and a report given to Congress next year.

The TUC will support unions in this work. It is essential that we do so if we are to deliver an effective service for ALL our members.

I believe it is essential that ALL groups are represented at all levels.

The General Council has given a lead.

Last year we made important changes in the composition of the General Council.

It is more than eighty years since we introduced the concept of reserved seats for women, to ensure that women workers were represented on our principal decision-making body.

In the 1980s we increased the number of seats reserved for women workers and soon afterwards took similar measures to ensure that the voice of black workers was heard in our deliberations.

Last year we moved further forward with new sections on the General Council to ensure that the interests of young workers are not neglected; that trade unionists with disabilities are given the representation they deserve; and that lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual union members, who have suffered vicious, but generally unreported discrimination at work over many years, know that they have a voice, as of right, within the General Council of the TUC.

We should be proud of these moves. I certainly am.

But we should also be wary of complacency. We should continue to ask the question which Bill Morris posed in his presidential address last year.

Does the body that makes the decisions on behalf of the trade union movement look like the people we represent?

If the answer to that question is no, and I think it still is: then we should ask 'why not?' and what can we do to make it so.

And in asking that question then we need to ask the broader question 'does the trade union movement look like the working population?'

And we know the answer to that is 'only in part'.

The facts and figures are all too familiar. Yes we are strongly represented in the public sector. But there is still plenty of scope for further recruitment. We are not doing that badly in manufacturing - but then, as we know, manufacturing is not doing that well.

And there are some parts of the private services sector where we are making inroads. But there are large areas where the working population has grown but union membership has not.

Unions do work hard on recruitment. We would not have survived the battering of the eighties and the nineties if we did not. But are we working hard enough? Do we have the balance right between recruitment, organisation and servicing our unions' democracy?

Recruitment is first and foremost a matter for unions. But the TUC can provide support and it is doing so.

Our Organising Academy is now entering its fifth year. The early graduates are making their mark within the movement and we are continuing to refine and develop the programme. More unions are supporting the Academy's work. But it could do with more support.

Last year Congress approved the Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group's Report - Reaching the Missing Millions. The ideas contained in the report were taken forward at the special meeting of the General Council and General Secretaries in the autumn.

The new website - WorkSMART - was launched in the run-up to Congress, providing an introduction to trade unionism and gateway to union membership - a new approach for the new economy. Here you can find a 55,000 word database on employment rights; a jargon buster and, most important, the non-member will find a way to find the union that suits the job they do.

Our close work with the National Union of Students is important too, at a time when more and more of the workforce take their first jobs as students at the rough end of the labour market and then enter the world of work full-time as graduates, hopefully, though not necessarily, in jobs with prospects.

As I said, none of this is an alternative to hard graft by individual unions.

The bottom line is the dotted line on which each member signs up.

But it is that wider work that cuts across and, at the same time, brings together the work of individual unions.

For one thing is certain, if we appear fractious and divided then we will appear that much less attractive to those people who are deciding, not which union to join - but whether to join a union at all.

The supermarkets and the banks can compete, because few of us can decide to withdraw completely from the need to buy groceries or manage our finances. But with the services that we offer too often the choice is not between unions but union or non-union.

I have mentioned the work of the Organising Academy and the Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group as support for unions in recruitment and organisation.

There are two other services that the TUC offers that I believe act as important recruitment tools.

The first is the work on learning services, which has mushroomed over the past few years, thanks in part to government finance and in part to union organisation. Our work in bringing learning into the workplace is something of which we can be rightly proud. It benefits our members, it benefits employers and it benefits the country as a whole - raising skill levels that have been too low for too long. We should congratulate the Government on new legislation which gives rights to paid leave for learning representatives.

The second is the work of the Partnership Institute, which is doing a tremendous job in promoting the concept of partnership and turning that concept into a practical reality.

There are still those who confuse partnership with 'selling out' or 'class collaboration'. I think they are mistaken.

To those who hold that view I say go and talk to the unions in those companies that are working with the Partnership Institute. Talk to the unions at Severn Trent Water and at British Bakeries. They are no pushovers. Their members know what benefits them. They know the benefits and the limits of the partnership approach and they know that when it does work it enhances the benefits that the union brings to their members.

I am sure that much will be said this week about relations with the Government. A lot has been written already. All I would do is to ask you to be constructive in your criticisms; to recognise the achievements as well as the shortcomings; and never to forget that the alternative is not the Labour Government we would like to have, but a return of the Conservatives that we would rather forget - a time when we did not debate whether the glass was half full or half empty but knew for certain that it had been smashed at our feet.

This week we will devote much of our time and much of our thoughts to international issues: to the Middle East, where we hope that through our contacts with the Palestinian and Israeli trade unions we can help promote the view that the price of peace is worth more than the value of violence; to Iraq and the threat to world peace; to Colombia and to Zimbabwe, countries where trade unionism is a high-risk business, and we will reach out to our sisters and brothers around the globe in the international trade union movement.

I trust that we will reach out too to the asylum seekers here in Britain; to the victims of racism; to the young and to the old; black and white; gay and straight; able bodied or with disabilities. We live in a diverse society. We should be proud and celebrate that diversity.

During my year as your president I have undertaken many duties on your behalf. I have spoken at a number of conferences and events. Last year I had the privilege of speaking on your behalf at the American trade union convention and on the way I visited Ground Zero in Manhattan and saw the scale of the destruction there and the impact on a city that epitomises diversity.

At home I was part of the delegation that visited a number of the cities in Yorkshire and Lancashire where the BNP had sought to peddle their propaganda and poison local politics. And I saw the tremendous work of the local trade unions who gave enormous support to undocumented workers who had lost their jobs and rights to benefits.

It has been a privilege to represent you this year as it has been a privilege for me to represent my union the CWU and before that the NCU and the POEU within the TUC.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Monks and the TUC staff for their support this year and throughout my time on the General Council. I would like to thank my wife and family for their support. And I would also like to thank all those who have supported me this year and throughout my career in the trade union movement. You have reached out to me.

I look to all of you to reach out beyond the hall, beyond your own unions and into those diverse workplaces and communities that compose our country today.

I have had my say. I look forward to spending the next four days listening to yours.

Thank you Congress."