The Labour Party and I parted company back in 1991. In the meantime we've seen New Labour, Blair, the ditching of Clause 4, a couple of illegal wars, breaking the Trade Union link and countless other acts of betrayal that would get Nye Bevan spinning in his grave.
So it was with some deliberation that I paid my £3 and registered as a 'Labour supporter' in order to be able to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
He's a rare thing in politics generally these days, a decent guy who still has some fundamental socialist values. But even so I have no illusions about him or his potential to reverse the party's downward spiral. Should he actually win the leadership I fear that he is so out of sync with the rest of the repugnant parliamentary Labour Party, that within a few weeks there will probably be a palace coup amongst the MPs to oust him.
But despite all this, when I saw that acting party boss Harriet Harman had instructed Labour MPs to abstain on the most vicious piece of Tory legislation since the days of Thatcher, whilst the Lib Dems and even some rebel Tories were voting against the Welfare Reform Bill, I thought it was worth one desperate last throw of dice ...
1 comment:
After Rotherham and the cover ups of the rape gangs in many cities by Labour, and indeed the left, I want nothing more than the destruction of the Labour Party and to work for a new movement, taking on board ordinary people's attempt to control their lives. I look at the much ignored attempt by parents of abused children to organise and at many people whom Labour and the left have brushed to one side. We don't need a massive party, a principled leader who will inevitably compromise, as happened in Greece. Incidentally, the EU and the international community would never allow Corbyn's manifesto. I have no desire to promote Toryism or whatever, but after a lifetime in the class struggle I believe it is time to dump Labour, the Left and certainly socialism however it is defined. I don't want to buy into left censorship, lies about race relations here and the US, and the phony green agenda. Keep up the good work with the blog. I am in my seventies and just started a new job, teaching animal welfare ethics and clinical animal behaviour to vets in Waikato Univ. New Zealand.
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