PENSIONERS’ leader Dot Gibson urged “inter-generational” action against austerity at the close of her organisation’s national conference yesterday.

The National Pensioners’ Convention, which held its annual “parliament” in Blackpool, discussed the appalling threats posed by another five years of Tory austerity.

Sheffield Hallam University professor of applied economic geography Christina Beattie, newly elected Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) general secretary Dave Ward and Ms Gibson addressed the conference yesterday.

The appeal for solidarity between older and younger generations came from Ms Gibson, who said: “There is a need for community-based union-led campaigns.

“We need a ‘balance sheet’ to show young people what has happened in the 70 years since the end of the second world war — how people in a mass movement voted for a Labour government that introduced the welfare state and the NHS — and not go back to the pre-war situation of unemployment and no welfare state.

“But we need to show that big business was waiting in the wings, and Thatcher came along and attacked welfare, transferring our industries to other, lower-paid countries.

“Now this is continuing with attacks on union rights, housing. We need to tell them how things were achieved and how we have arrived at the situation we are in now — people who were in the public sector now working in the private sector on worse wages and conditions.

“We have to tell younger people we must join together to fight these attacks. We must unite.”