At long last there is someone giving a voice to those like me who really care about social justice, equality, fairness, and above all democracy; those who seem to have been sidelined and left to wander in a wilderness of neoliberalism for thirty or more years...
After the Iraq war and the introduction of university tuition fees I swore I would never vote Labour again. Then the tone of politics began to change with Ed Miliband's call for increased democracy; greater openness; and a fairer, more just, society. Recognising the limitations of our political system, and its many democratic deficiencies, I decided to vote for Labour again: we at last had a small opportunity to bring about change - a chance to change things back once again to an approach focused on the life chances of all, not just the few.
When Jeremy Corbyn, a great advocate of peace, social justice and democracy - a very honest, soft spoken, polite politician and someone who definitely did not fiddle expenses - stood in the leadership competition, I joined the party to help him fight on behalf of the many forgotten, exploited, and oppressed people living in our very wealthy and prosperous country. A country that had, in the past, benefitted me to the extent that 15 years ago I had felt it was time to give something back.
There are very many people like me: those who remember very well the hard fights for a better life for all working people, for equality of sex, gender, race, and opportunity, and for the disenfranchised in society. Many who now clearly recognise that the abundant opportunities for social mobility available to us during our lifetime have now disappeared. Such opportunities no longer exist for our children or our children's children because too many obstacles have been placed in their path. In my view this is all directly down to the neoliberal politics of Thatcher and their continuation under Blair and Brown.
Blair had won a massive first election on the back of a manifesto that promised much, including the renationalisation of railways, and of energy companies, and the building of more social housing. He lied - he took our party of democratic socialists and turned it into a Tory lite neocon Party. Yes, New Labour demonstrated that it had a much bigger heart than Thatcher's government, achieving many good things during the thirteen years it had power and indeed, righting some of the wrongs she had inflicted on us. But economically it developed into an extension of the Tory Party: adapting and adopting the small state, low tax, low pay neoliberal ideology that led us to the current state of gross inequalities, rising levels of poverty, and an increase in homelessness not seen since the showing of Loach's famous film 'Cathy Come Home'.
Even Thatcher claimed that Blair was her greatest "creation".
As he shifted direction further and further to the right on the New Labour journey Blair began to ooze labour supporters by the million, election after election their numbers were getting smaller. He even got rid of many incumbent left wing MPs and shunted in his PPE SPADs - and other New Labour supporters - into areas where they had no knowledge or understanding of people's needs. Local incumbents were dumped: labour activists and councillors who had spent many years building up support for Labour, and often fighting issues caused by their own party's abandonment of industry in favour of a services key economy. The way Angela Eagle herself acquired her seat in Wallasey - a Yorkshire lass in a Lancastrian seat for God's sake - perfectly illustrates how politics was taking on the American flavour of money choosing who represented people in Parliament. Power shifted away from local people, from local councils, to the centre. The chances of local people getting a seat as a representative of their communities were taken away. Which perhaps explains the current dearth of potential labour leaders in the party that led to Corbyn being elected in the first place: nepotism is rife: witness the names of those arguing against Corbyn's tenure: Stephen Kinnock, Hilary Benn. Recently there was a plan to oust a long serving labour MP from another, even safer, Merseyside seat than Wallasey: the person being shunted in from the centre was Euan Blair. You cannot tell me that they got their opportunities to enter Parliament purely on merit, or for fighting on behalf of local people... Luckily Social media kicked into action and Baby Blair is still waiting on the sidelines, his chances of being a British politician have diminished greatly in recent days methinks. So, the power of local people to manage their lives was diminishing at great pace. And personal debt too was rising phenomenally.
Blair and Brown's deregulation of the banks went further than even Thatcher's did: he allowed gambling to help pay for a crumbling infrastructure and charities to help the increasing number of the poor, forgotten underclass created by Thatcher in her sacking of the unions - a lost generation of workers still struggling to get by today. This attack on unions continued under Blair as he carried on limiting our rights to withdraw our labour and negotiate collectively; the only real form of power working people have ever had over their masters.
And then, to top it all, he jumped into bed with his American chum Bush and took us into a disastrous, probably illegal war, that has left the world reeling; teetering on the edge of another big war and he has not been brought to task for it: Justice is inseparable from democracy. If a prime minister can avoid indictment for waging aggressive war, the entire body politic is corrupted. Indeed some are suggesting that we are on the brink of another World War, perhaps even another manufactured war. I certainly hope they are wrong despite the words of Theresa May talking about threats of nuclear war are ringing through the press. At the end of Blair's tenure the Labour Party had lost more than 6 million labour supporters, including many active Labour members, who began to form or join other, new left leaning, parties, disillusioned with the direction Labour was heading. I was one of them.
Brown fared no better. Then Miliband arrived in the scene, was viciously attacked by the right of the party and corporate media for being too left wing. Sadly, despite being a centrist, he was not trusted by the general public either, so he had little chance of influencing anything. Then, despite his good intentions, he totally lost us the Labour heartland, Scotland: the birthplace of the labour movement. By standing side by side with the Tories during the Scottish referendum he proved to many people that Labour had become a Tory lite Party, if not quite yet a puppet of the Tories.
Now, over the last few weeks, the New Labour members of the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party, as opposed to the CLP, which refers to the Constituency Labour Parties - of whom more than 80% of a large number surveyed support Jeremy Corbyn's leadership) have overtly demonstrated tendencies towards the use of the Tories' nastier, elements such as engaging with the right wing press, to undermine Corbyn's mandated leadership, and more recently by carrying out a coup, long in the
making, against Corbyn by resigning en masse from the shadow cabinet; hoping to force him to resign. They are acting directly against the expressed wishes of a vast majority of CLPs, of Labour Party members, and of union affiliates and supporters in a coup attempting to oust Jeremy Corbyn: the man with a very large majority mandate from members. Only 9 months after he was elected to the position, although many claim it began the day after the leadership election was won. It is not just an attack on Corbyn: it is a direct attack on the membership of the Labour Party and a direct attack on our Democratic processes, which it has tried to subvert at every turn: overtly during the coup and more subtly before and since.
making, against Corbyn by resigning en masse from the shadow cabinet; hoping to force him to resign. They are acting directly against the expressed wishes of a vast majority of CLPs, of Labour Party members, and of union affiliates and supporters in a coup attempting to oust Jeremy Corbyn: the man with a very large majority mandate from members. Only 9 months after he was elected to the position, although many claim it began the day after the leadership election was won. It is not just an attack on Corbyn: it is a direct attack on the membership of the Labour Party and a direct attack on our Democratic processes, which it has tried to subvert at every turn: overtly during the coup and more subtly before and since.
The establishment has always been afraid of the famous "Tyranny of the Majority", regarded by elites as mob rule. We were, when suffrage was initially granted, a large group of predominantly uneducated people. That is obviously no longer the case. Yet, the establishment still fight, and are fighting, tooth, nail and backstabbing thrust, to keep us like mushrooms: kept in the dark, shat on from time to time, and then sold to the highest bidder.
It is time, now that we have the opportunity, to bring about a PEACEFUL revolution in democratic politics. That is why I decided to get involved; decided I needed to know why the hopes we had for a much better, more peaceful world in the seventies had come to nothing.
Our politics has obviously shown itself in a bad light. We need change and Corbyn is driving US to do that. US, not him. He expects us to get involved and help sort out the mess we allowed to happen by sitting on our backsides and allowing others: to rule over us; to dictate the kind of life we should live; to get our young people into vast amounts of debt from a very young age, and also,deny them any real firm of social security - even the basic minimum wage is not fully paid to workers under 25. This, so that they will have no choice but to work hard for very little pay, or starve as many are forced to on our so called apprenticeship schemes where wages paid just about cover the costs of getting to work. Many are exploited more than the old trade apprentices were in the 1960s - at least they left with a real skill worth something.
The evidence for this is obvious: there have been massive increases in the levels of ABSOLUTE POVERTY among WORKING people and their children, now reliant on charities and good will to survive. The differences between relative and absolute poverty are diminishing, which allows the Tories to claim a reduction in terms of relative poverty. And most of the PLP voting against Corbyn voted with the Tories in cuts to welfare, on going to war - their voting records speak for themselves - they do not reflect true labour values of equal opportunity, fairness and increasing equality: quite the contrary.
It is time, now that we have the opportunity, to bring about a PEACEFUL revolution in democratic politics. I urge people to join the Labour Party; to start learning about how politics works - and doesn't work in our favour - in this country and elsewhere. For, in a world of global multinational corporates, it will take many more workers coming together than just those of any single state alone to bring about the necessary changes. We should all be more involved, use our brains, our voices, and our votes to bring about the changes necessary to return our politics to focus less on economic growth at any cost and more on creating a society that works for the greater good of all.
We want our Party back - the People's Party: the Labour Party that our fathers, and their fathers before them, fought and died to create. And Corbyn is the man who will help us do that.
