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.