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FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT, WITH ALL OUR MIGHT
President Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier in bomber jacket to declare the Iraq War over. Tony goes to City banquets in his stuffed shirt to declare the class war over.
Premature ejaculators both. In the class war Labour has gone AWOL. The masses are still oppressed by the classes, their organisations have been weakened, their voices stilled, and their communities broken up. They need our help more than ever. Yet without the conditioning of class Labour no longer has fire in the belly. Only food from the most expensive restaurants.
We don’t even have a raison d’etre now socialism is dead, the nation state at a discount, and social democracy the creed that durst not speak its name. American politics have marvellous myths: the frontier, the American dream the infinite perfectibility of Americans. All Britain’s myths are of class, and Labour’s only narrative that of the onward march of Labour. We’ve become more of an elite over the years and in our elite cabinet there are only two genuine representatives of the masses: David Blunkett has now dedicated himself to bashing them, and John Prescott is so happy to be clinging on as Tony’s acolyte that he’s forgotten his responsibility to keep Tony in line with the people. Without leadership the mass mill around, fracture and divide, get briefly bamboozled by Lib-Dems or sink into apathy and alienation because no one leads them, points them at the enemy, or offers real prospects to the economic motivation which is still dominant. Mrs Thatcher did more to satisfy it than we’ve done since the sixties.
And boy do they need it because since then their world has been turned upside down, their communities destroyed and redeveloped, the industries which offered them high pay and gave character and pride to their areas have been destroyed or reduced. Their collective strength has been broken, their aspirations reduced to the one surviving instinct to keep their head above water and share the Marks &Spencer life style which was becoming universal. Globalisation defeated them, forcing them to wave goodbye to their jobs, dismantle their machinery, and even lose the low wage alternatives, while Pat Hewitt tells them to rejoice in the process. It will all ultimately be for their own good.
So economic gaps have widened under Labour as pandering to wealth became our ideology. There are more poor than ever before. Wealth multiplies and grows. The rich have never been richer or more powerful and arrogant. Yet apart from a slight effort at redistribution through tax credits (well done Gordon) and a minimum wage which is too low and badly enforced, Labour has done nothing to tax wealth or empower the unions. Resources must be moved to the deprived regions, the areas of educational disadvantage, and the depressed communities.
It’s not so much about the old manual workers (who feel themselves to be working class) versus the comfortable middle class, though that’s still the norm in the old industrial areas including Grimsby. It’s about the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged, the have mores (but not have mores) and the have lessees, those who have jobs pensions and security and those constantly struggling to make ends meet. The class war is still there and still to be fought as this is the most class ridden society in the world, more so even than America. As long as the working class not only has to struggle for its day to day existence, but has worse health, worse education, dies younger and gets the worst housing in the worst parts of town.
So why don’t we fight the war we were started to win? Why instead of betterment of the people do we concentrate on locking up their kids and stirring their prejudices? Why don’t we provide them with more and better houses rather than privatising council houses to charge them more rent? Why do we do everything for the pushy middle class offering them choice in schools and health and so little for the less well off who need better quality services and an end to the mean shabbiness which they get at every turn?
Money talks the people don’t. So why do we listen only to the talking money of the media, the overpaid pundits who dominate Labour’s thinking, the corporations vested interests, not to whose we should be representing?
It can only be because New Labour wants to be chums with business, the fat cats, and the Celebs, the elite who are apparently the only people Tony really likes? It’s partly a question of taste. He finds the people inconvenient and doesn’t know quite what to say to them. But it’s also because the UK needs to attract foreign capitalism and you don’t do that with strong unions, uppity workers and high wages, but by offering the opportunity to screw down wages gradgrind conditions and hire and fire at will. In the constant war between the people and the vested interests we’re no longer on the side of the people. They embarrass us.
Labour is about equality. Not equality of opportunity: the able and the pushy will always get on. Not encouraging the meritocracy: they’ll kick the class they leave in the teeth, as well as weaken it by leaving. It’s not tax credit palliatives but a fundamental shift in power and resources to those at the bottom of the ladder. Those for whom Labour, must build the platform of jobs education health care and economic growth from which they can advance themselves and their families. We began that job with the welfare state and full employment but we’ve allowed both to be eroded. This is not full employment and the hamburger-frying-shelf-stacking economy does not advance the working class. It keeps them in subjection. The people want real jobs paying real money and offering real pensions. Just like the pundits and the politicians.
Power to the pushy is no use. We have to level up and positively discriminate towards those who’ve been discriminated against by the dirty deal of the ages, before and since Labour began. Reaching out to bring in middle class people like Tony is no use. Those with a conscience will join us anyway but the outreach does no good if it alienates our base, if the people think Labour has done nothing for them, if they think it’s no use voting for any of them, and drop off our scene as a result. What shall it profit a party to win Bernie Eccles tone if it loses its own soul? Fight the Good Fight with all thy might. The rest is frippery. |
