The Democratic Party Trumped and Blue Labour Stumped?

Wake up PLP and all those that support your futile quest for ‘Similia Similibus Curantur’ – that is the theory that "likes are cured by likes". Donald Trump’s election provides ample evidence for the polar opposite.

Over the past 30/35 years the Labour Party has deliberately moved further and further rightward to try to occupy ‘the middle ground’. Problem is the ‘middle ground’ became an ever rightward shifting sand which was, ironically, actually helped along by the Labour Party’s slow but absolute correlational abandonment of any semblance of any meaningful ‘red water’ opposition and tangible alternative solutions. In fact that rightward move has all too often (far too often for me) been openly condoned and sometimes (unbelievably) even applauded by Labour in opposition and when in government.  

By simple virtue of the fact that the majority of the PLP seem to have accepted wholeheartedly a perceived ‘need’ to move ever rightward and thus ever deeper into Tory territory they offered little or no opposition to the increasing neo-liberal lunacy so loved by a Tory Party that itself is moving into political territory that Oswald Mosley would recognise as a dream realised. However, that ‘shifting sand’ has become a quicksand and the Labour Party were sinking fast. Then came along Jeremy Corbyn and the revolt of a Labour Party membership long abandoned spiritually and democratically. They had finally had enough.

If the global (not just American) political scene that has been emerging for a few years now reveals nothing else it is openly displaying the fact that people have had enough of the ‘same old same old’. They want change and they want it now. It is an urgency born of desperation that has seen the great American public being pushed to the unenviable and dangerous point where they have elected what some would consider the lesser of two evils and a man that is unashamedly psychopathic, misogynistic, racist, and morally bankrupt to lead them for at least the next four years. People have simply had enough. They can take no more. Please listen to their voices Blue Labour – they are telling a very simple tale, and one that you need to listen to.  

That increasing want for alternatives; for change; for newness; and for some semblance of justice is embodied, whether you like it or not, in Jeremy Corbyn and his huge and evolving following. It’s not a ‘cult of Corbyn’ or a ‘Trotsky takeover’ and those following his lead are definitely not "rabble" or “Nazi Stormtroopers”. They are people desperate for ‘different’, for justice, for change, and change for the better.

It’s time to get behind him, and not with knives to plant in his back any more. Even if you think he’s a terrible Leader, or a mad man that lives in the past, or indeed, anything else it really does not matter one single iota.  Not to him, his followers or the general public. They just don’t care what you think of him. What they do care about is what’s happening to them and their families that has been brought about by the gigantic injustices deliberately built into the system that is neo-liberalism. An economic and political philosophy that grips them tight in what they can clearly see as a nonsense, and flung at them with the political claptrap - “no alternative”. It cannot; it must not go on.

Same old same old won’t do any more. If for nothing but your own sakes – PLEASE WAKE UP!

Graeme Beard.

Living in the Past with Jeremy Corbyn? Yes please!

Well, according to the Daily Mail and other right wing mouthpieces of the good ol' Establishment, we, and most especially Jeremy Corbyn, are living in the past.

Apparently he and we want to see a return to a long gone age. To step back in time to an era lost to a modern world in a global economy where the promises of riches for all will come tomorrow (always tomorrow I notice) and via the tried and trusted mechanism known 'trickle down economics'. We at the bottom currently feed from the crumbs and scraps that fall off the masters table and that's just simply the way of the 'modern world' and it cannot; nay - should not, be challenged or changed. It is the 'modern' way. There is no alternative and to hark back to the terrible and destructive past is to become a Dinosaur.

Ok – where do I begin? Ah! The source. The Daily Mail. A newspaper (if it can be fairly described as such) owned by a tax dodging £Billionaire who sits in the House of Lords as The 4^th Viscount Rothmere. His given name is Jonathan Harmsworth. He has non-domicile tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts. He pays zero tax and at the same time makes £Millions off his media empire based here in the UK. But for all that his paper preaches to us that we lot at the bottom need to understand that he and his ilk at the top know what’s best for us and that it ain’t no good going back to the past. We are Dinosaurs one and all.

Now I lived a lot of my life “in the past” and I can remember at least some of it although some seems, most strangely, to be lost to me. Let’s deal with the ‘lost’ bits first eh?

For instance, as a kid in the 1950’s and 60’s I can never remember seeing anyone sleeping in a doorway of a shop because they were homeless or spikes being placed where they sleep to make it impossible for them to settle. Or homeless people being arrested, brought before the Magistrates and fined. Fines they can’t possibly pay and all for the terrible offence of being destitute and, well, for being homeless because of that destitution.

I can also never remember people having to sell The Big Issue on street corners in order to try to pull themselves out of poverty or people who have been forced into beggary and indigence asking for the change in my pocket so that they can eat that day.

And on that I can also never remember a situation where food banks became a facility available to people deliberately impoverished by the system, (and a facility by the way that were once called ‘Soup Kitchens’ which again appeared during another era where the rich ruled the day and where there was “no alternative”), food banks that are the only place where parents could go to feed their kids for the next three days at a time.

I can also never remember old age pensioners having to choose between heating their home or having something hot to eat that day or indeed being advised on the TV and Radio how to “eat for less”. Or those same older people being told how they should dress in layers to sit in front of a one bar electric fire on only for 2 of the coldest hours a day so as they don’t perish and die during the freeze that every winter brings them. My memory seems to be pretty poor actually because I can’t remember any of the above at all.

Really - all this “I can’t remember” stuff! It’s very frustrating you know. Anyway, perhaps it’s me but there are a few things I can remember so I’d best write them down before I forget them too.

Right here we go. These things I can recall.

I can remember poverty being alleviated via full employment and a welfare state that wanted to take care of everyone. I can remember houses being built that were either affordable for the working classes or council houses going up where genuinely poor people could escape living 5 or 6 to a single room and sleeping on old mattresses on the floor covered by coats and not expensive blankets to keep them warm at night. I seem to remember too that most were damp and parasite infested rooms in housing actually reserved for the lower classes and owned by rich Landlords. They were called ‘slums’ were they not? Yeah – I remember now. Breeding places for TB, Scabies, Rickets, Measles, Chicken Pox, Mumps, and all the other good old conditions and diseases now returning to haunt the poor and vulnerable.

I remember prospects for young people leaving school where there were properly structured paid apprenticeships and even for some the promise of a University education without having drill themselves in to enormous debt that will chase some of them to even their graves. They had, oh what were they called now? Got it - Education Grants to live on and they even had their Tuition Fees paid! My god! It’s all coming back now.

In fact I remember when libraries were opening rather than closing. When local authorities could afford to fill holes in the road and where, if you bought an old dilapidated house you could apply for a Council Grant to make it a fit place to live.

And most of all I remember a National Health Service where lack of money wasn’t the prime and destructive motivation behind the withdrawal of health services leading to an increase in disease and deaths and where services were actually increasing in quantity and quality for everyone free at the point of delivery. Where people’s health was seen as an investment and not an expense. And where privateers and profiteers like Virgin Care with their grubby, money driven involvement with the growing cancer of NHS privatisation didn’t even exist.

Now reading this back maybe the past had lessons for us and the more I think about it the more I really wish I had a time machine. Because if the things embedded in my memory are anywhere near true then I for one desperately want to take that trip backwards and subsequently Mr. Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere (and the rest of you lot in the 1% at the top), I’ll support any political leader or party that would be my transporter and companion.

So, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters are Dinosaurs are they? Well it seems to me that the real Dinosaurs are the members of the Establishment who get away with murder and play hide and seek behind what Galbraith called “The Conventional Wisdom”. A ‘Convention Wisdom’ that has, for decades stolen from our pockets to fill theirs. Any wonder they want to perpetuate the system ‘as is’? Unfortunately for them their robbery game is now being exposed daily. The empty ‘no alternative’ argument holds no credibility any more.

It is actually they that continue to play the role of the Dinosaur in a fast changing world. A Dinosaur that, as they play their continuous game of hiding their greed behind ever thinning veils of a false economic respectability they invented I think could fairly be a Dinosaur called ‘Youthinktheysaurus’? Well the answer is increasingly “Yes”.

Roll on to the past JC. I’m on board the same train.

Graeme.

Militant Tendencies?

THE MILITANT TENDENCY.

Definition of 'Militant': "Having or showing a desire or willingness to use strong, extreme, and sometimes forceful methods to achieve something."

In the 1980's the 'Militant Tendency' as they were known became pariah within the Labour Party. One of the reasons for that was their absolute unwillingness to compromise and thus promote party unity. They refused to listen to repeated calls for 'Unity' and, in consequence caused some significant disruption. (There were many other obvious reasons but that was always underlying the disunity problem.) As time went by they hardened their attitudes even further and eventually forced a very acrimonious split. There could be only one winner and subsequently Militant died a slow and painful death. I remember it all too well being ancient myself and a Labour Party member at the time.

Well perhaps it's just me but comparisons with the 1980's 'Militant Tendency' movement and today keep popping into my head. The palpable irony is though that now it seems it is the neo-liberal right wing 'New' Labour representatives that are hardening their attitudes and have adopted a no compromise disunity stance. The outcome is causing terrible disruption and seems to be leading us once again towards a forced split within the Labour Party. Not something to look forward to believe me.

That said, and for me it has become a given in just 4 short days after Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected with a huge mandate, it is the case that those acting in a likewise disruptive manner have now become a mirror image of that group of people once known as the 'Militant Tendency'. A group of people who seem unable or unwilling (or maybe both) to listen to repeated calls for 'Unity' and so carry on regardless causing significant and terrible disruption in their quest to undermine and destroy a democratically elected leader, and at any cost.

Increasingly, to me anyway, the only observable difference is that 'Militant' were hard left whilst they are hard right. Is that not the only real distinction between these two factions? Can it be that the same fate that befell the 'Militant Tendency' of the 1980's can now be clearly seen rising above an horizon that only those acting in a militant fashion today cannot and/or will not look to and acknowledge?

Just asking.

GB.

Let's be forgiving in nature and idiots in life.

As much as I am a Jeremy Corbyn supporter (and I most definitely am), and although I know he is trying so very hard to promote a "new kind of politics" (because he says so and he always means what he says), and although I have the greatest respect for him and his 'new way' I have to differ with him on topics like turning the other cheek. 

Those openly opposing JC from within the LP have, right from the start, colluded together with evil intent and behind the scenes with the insidious old guard like Mandelson, McTernan, Kinnock, Blair and Campbell in a malevolent spirit of "get him at all costs" (JC). They will NEVER be his allies and will carry their opposition and even hatred to their graves. I've never seen anyone filled to the brim with more acid and hatred than John McTernan. He must be at an internal combustion point most days. 

Anyway for me it's not the left wing 'Entryists' and those that are trying to reclaim the LP that are the problem and 'the enemy within'. It is Blue Labour and all they stand for. They are members, some founder members, of that imitation careerist filled Tory Party that has lost the LP five million votes between 1997 and 2010 and pushed us out in to the political waste ground. Harry Truman said it all; "If you give the people a choice between an imitation conservative and a real conservative they'll choose the real conservative every time." And that's why we are where we are today - not because of JC. It's squarely because of them and their ilk. 

Now the Chicken Coup members desperately want a return to that state of imitation. a kind of 'safe house' for them; for what they truly believe in, and obviously what  they hold so very dear - that is being 'Tory Lite'. A deep and abiding belief in neoliberalism and its vigorous application but with softer words and a smiley face. 

Their behaviour has been abysmal, insulting, painful, damaging, undemocratic, unnecessary and unwarranted. They need to be dealt with as severely as they have dealt with JC and us lot via their malevolent creation; 'The Great Purge' (both Episode 1 and currently Episode 2). 

However, it's not revenge that drives me - it's practicality. Let them off and they will just wait in the wings to strike again at another time but with sharper knives. If anyone thinks they will give up and simply go away then please forget it because they won't. When has that happened so far? What day was that on? They will just go underground and emerge again in the near future. As much as some think and wish it were true, we do not live in 'Pink Fluffy Bunny Land' and there are those that really should make a mammoth attempt to remove their rose tinted glasses and try as hard as they can to overcome their inbuilt but unfounded faith based narrative of "but they are lovely people really" forgiveness mode. "By your actions you are known" - and their actions have been disgraceful bringing nothing but negative outcomes to all. Them included actually. But maybe that's for the future too.

Mark these words - if a spirit of 'forgive them for they know not what they do' does finally reign then we will, without doubt, end up with the outcome of another very relevant whiff of sagacity; "Those who cannot learn from history are destined to repeat it." (George Santayana.) 

Want to go through this again? No - nor me! 

Graeme.

Tory-vs-Labour Purges. And the winner is..........................

To Purge is; “to rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; cleanse; purify.”

Seems to me there are two ‘purges’ going on at the moment. One by the Labour Party that is aimed at ridding the Leadership Election of those who are “impure” and “undesirable” in thought and deed. An active attempt to emasculate what the rump of the old guard of ‘New’ Labour would see as a very inconvenient democratic outcome in an election process based on voting criteria that they insisted upon. A method of emasculation far better described by one of those already ‘purged’ when he said on the BBC that they (the Labour Party) are “trying to rig the election.” God bless Jeremy Hardy then. Sheldon Wolin is perhaps more generous when he calls it ‘Managed Democracy’ but I’m sticking with Hardy. Mainly because I’m one of the ‘purged’ too.

This ‘purging’ has now been going on for a couple of weeks and will continue for a little while longer. Subsequently there is a growing anger in the air and much spitting of dry feathers but really no-one has been harmed beyond their sense of justice or pride. Certainly no-one has died.

However, there is a second ‘purge’ in progress that has been going on for some years now. A Coalition and now Tory Government ‘purge’ of the poor, the destitute, the recovering sick, the disabled and the vulnerable. In this ‘purge’ people do die. Regularly.

This second ‘purge’ (and I’m getting heartily sick of that word) is, in my view, well thought out, deliberately applied, and an obvious crime against humanity. If another government elsewhere in the world was treating their sick and disabled, their children and their poor as the UK government is doing to those in the UK today, (and especially if that country had resources we could appropriate), we would be at least sabre rattling if not at war for humanitarian reasons and the UN would be passing resolutions left right and centre. So far, as far as I can see, there has been little more than a muted ‘tut tut’ from those in power and then back to business as usual.

Is it not only the other day that Iain Duncan Smith, the Sinister Minister announced even more attacks on the disabled? A speech full of sophistry designed to cover cruelty with kind words spoken softly and aimed squarely at one of the most vulnerable groups in society. One far less able to counter his blows. By then he would (should?) have known all about the Death Statistics produced by his very own DWP. And if not then why not? However, although knowing that people are dying in their thousands it wasn’t even enough to make him break stride. We are dealing with a very ugly form of inhumanity here and on an industrial scale as far as resultant deaths are concerned. We are fast approaching 100,000.

The DWP have had these statistics, that they have done their very best to keep hidden, for years. As the Minister in charge if Iain Duncan Smith didn’t know about these deaths then there is something desperately wrong at the DWP and at the Cabinet Table. And if he did but still carried on regardless then are there not criminal charges to be answered here?

Manslaughter; “The unlawful killing of one human by another without express or implied intent to do injury.”

Or worse,

Murder; “The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.”

Seems to me the Courts should decide.

The Lesser Beings.

Death statistics reluctantly issued by the DWP after claiming they didn’t collect and collate them, after they tried their best to obfuscate bully and bluster their way (and in any way they could) to hiding the numbers and to deny public access even through the courts and the Freedom of Information Commissioners Office have been forced to reveal that since the Work Capability Assessment began in earnest we are fast approaching 100,000 deaths of sick and disabled people deemed ‘fit for work’ in a flawed ‘tick in a box’ system that is still being used. I wonder why it’s still being used? But that’s for another day.

Can you imagine (God forbid) if 100,000 body bags had already come home from our illegal war in Iraq since 2010? Just take a second to think about that.

If that had been the case this disgraceful Tory Government and its predecessor Coalition would have been out of office in days and the war ended within weeks. Maybe even the warmonger who sent those troops to war in the first place might have ended up where he should – at a War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Wonder who that might be eh?

However, have you ever asked yourself why there is this seemingly huge difference in empathetic attitude and sympathetic approach to these two different subdivisions of society? Why would they be treated differently?

Could it be that one has been the never ending victim of the propaganda machine and government ‘double speak’ and the other not? After all, it’s only now that people in high places wring their hands and the very occasional article appears in the press regarding that Procrustean event called ‘The Chilcott Enquiry’ whereas the public has been told in no uncertain terms via a right wing demonising media and a certain Tory Minister almost daily that “75% of those on the sick are faking it”, or that everyone who is disabled is “more sick in the head than sick in the body”, or that everyone and anyone who is claiming unemployment benefits are doing so because “it is a lifestyle choice”. Pick up a newspaper today, you won’t have to look far or hard to see at least one of these stories.

We have Channel 5 programmes like ‘Benefit Street’ and ‘On Benefits and Proud’ and ‘Benefits Britain: Life on The Dole’. All portraying people unfortunate enough to have nothing or less as a disgusting and degraded sub-culture out to steal from the pockets of us ‘normal’ people so that they can live the high life on £7 a day. These are the scum of humanity; worth less than the shit you would wipe off your shoes. ‘They’ are the problem. ‘They’ are the cause of it all. ‘They’ are “skivers” and “benefit cheats”, they are the “feral and feckless”, breeding like flies all day and night behind drawn curtains, taking drugs and drinking cans of cheap lager as they watch porn all day. And, often unspoken but implied if only by the very fact that ‘they’ – the disabled - also receive benefits, everyone who is classed as incapacitated can also be included. Well, after all they claim too don’t they? Tar spreads well when brushed broadly.

“They’re all the same them lot on benefits.” “Disabled – yeah right, there’s nothing wrong with them” and “I don’t see anything wrong with him/her. They should get a job.” The outcomes? Disability hate crime on the increase. Understanding and compassion on the decrease. The philosophy of ‘the lesser being’ drummed into us at every opportunity by continuous inculcation promoting in turn a ‘Them and Us’ culture.

Once you identify and dehumanise through language any people anywhere at any time (like immigrants desperately fleeing for their lives and trying to enter Europe on rafts built of wooden pallets being described  as “cockroaches” by a certain bottle blonde narcissist) it is a precursor to being able to commit and/ or ignore atrocities since those people are no longer human. They become subhuman. That’s how it was for Jews in 1930’s Germany. That’s how it is for the sick; the disabled; and the unfortunate in Britain today.

And the worse thing is – the public believe it and there’s the difference. 

Managed Democracy

Politicians of all main parties dribble on continuously about "voter apathy"; about "engaging people"; and about how terribly regrettable it is that so many "can't be bothered to go out and vote". They wring their hands and slowly shake their heads in disbelief and disappointment. What utter nonsense! They don't want 'involvement'; they don't want 'engagement'; and nor do they want people to be 'enthused'. Or at least, only if those same people are 'involved'; 'engaged'; and 'enthused' with them and their cause. They don't want democracy - they want what Sheldon Wolin calls "Managed Democracy". 

Look only to Scotland and the sheer panic that the Establishment displayed when it looked as if they might not be able to manage the independence vote last September. Running around like headless chickens trying to convince people by fair means or foul to vote for the status quo. A status quo that favours only them and no others. A status quo that has, for generations, been maintained by "apathy", by "disengagement"; and by lack of "involvement". The supporters of independence may well have lost the vote but they showed the way.

And so the same is happening all over again with Jeremy Corbyn. As soon as there was even a sniff of a chance he would be elected Leader the Labour Party Establishment big guns came out and started lobbing shells at him and his ideas. The falling Labour Party membership, so long bemoaned and whinged about by Labour Party members and Labour Party Parliamentary politicians alike has increased by (just about) three fold. But rather than being excited and happy about this they see it as a curse from the gods. In fact it seems all those recently joined are "entryists" (whatever the hell that means) and/or "Trotskyists" and/or subversive "hard left extremists" when actually it's all about not being able to control this new democratic upsurge and turn it to their advantage. They want the status quo to remain. They are Emperors ruling an Empire they infiltrated and eventually took over some twenty five years ago. It is they that are the "entryists" not those that want the Labour Party back or those who are joining because Jeremy Corbyn offers hope. A commodity in very short supply for many a year as far as being on offer from the Labour Party. 

Democracy can be very inconvenient but it is still democracy. The irony is that it was the right wing of the Labour Party that instigated this new 'democratic system' in the first place. "Be careful of what you ask for because you may get it." They wanted it - they got it - they don't want it. And they don't want it because they can't control it.