Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
Two damned good posts from Paul Anderson at the excellent Gauche blog. What a bloody mess, observes, including this thought about 42 day detention, (the Hancock reference is a nice touch)
The whole palaver over 42-day detention has been ridiculous. I accept that the cops need more time to collect evidence from Islamist terrorist suspects than they do, from, say, football hooligans. But why go for bang 'em up for six weeks for interrogation? No one has explained. Why not risk prosecutions going wrong? OK it's expensive, but how much more so than the complex compensation packages that seem to have emerged this week in order to win over Labour doubters? Why piss off every lawyer who thinks that Magna Carta did not die in vain? It's plain stupid.
And then this recognition that the students he will sign up for next year had only just been born when Thatcher crept snivelling off the scene. Paul's recollection of the 1983 election should serve as a lesson to those armchair socialists who 'won't campaign until we pull out of Iraq' or some other boneheaded, lazy-arsed excuse:
I'm not proud to admit it now, but I treated that election purely as a spectator sport. I was far too left-wing to get involved, and anyway - whatever the opinion polls said - I was confident it would result in the Tories being defeated and some centrist Keynesian corporatist Labour-Alliance coalition taking their place. That would leave the serious left to push for social revolution through rank-and-file workplace organisation and grassroots social movements. In other words, I thought it would be back to 1960s-1970s business-as-usual (as I then understood it, need I emphasise).
But in the early hours of June 10 1983, as the results came in and the beers went down, it dawned on me with horror that I had got it completely wrong. It was a straightforward Tory landslide. The authoritarian free-market right was utterly triumphant. The idea that somehow there would be space for anything other than desperate defence of the welfare state and trade union rights against the Thatcherite onslaught suddenly struck me as incredibly stupid. Whatever was wrong with Labour, the only alternative in a first-past-the-post electoral system was the Tories - and they were a great deal worse.
Sorry Bob but to we students and twenty-somethings, this IS all ancient history. Going on about 1983 is about as relevant as Tories telling voters at that election what that lovely patrician Mr Macmillan did for the working class in 1958, or what Gaitskell said about decolonisation (it's the same distance away).
In the here and now "young people" look at a government masquerading as Labour when it's more Thatcherite than even the bloody woman herself - with a nice twist of REAL authoritarianism. That nice Mr Cameron talks a lot more about poverty and about freedom than Mr Brown.
GAUCHE's memories are valid but it will take something else, and more in the here and now, to convince youth that Labour is left-wing or that the Tories are evil fascist bastards.
While we're on a 1983 trip, Neil Clark has an excellent piece on the "longest suicide note in history". Well worth a read by all lefties, inside Labour or not.
anonymous - as far as I know most people don't think tories are fascists, and actually, I think it is a very dangerous and stupid thing for anyone to say when there are still genuine fascists about. Nor do I, nor many other people I wouldn't imagine, think that Labour are socialist. It isn't masquerading as Labour - it is Labour.
One of the most common misconceptions amongst those who know little or nothing about these things, is that Labour is a 'socialist' party and the conservatives are a party of the establishment. The distinction between the two is that both of them are managerialists i.e. managing the economy in the interests of capital, but that Labour historically does so through a greater commitment to the working class. The Liberals are neither. They are economicall Tory and socially liberal.
As Tony Benn says, there are socialists in the Labour Party, just as there are some christians in the church.
Don't worry about it, you'll learn these things as you get older.
June 14, 2008 4:45 PM | permalink
Sorry Bob but to we students and twenty-somethings, this IS all ancient history. Going on about 1983 is about as relevant as Tories telling voters at that election what that lovely patrician Mr Macmillan did for the working class in 1958, or what Gaitskell said about decolonisation (it's the same distance away).
In the here and now "young people" look at a government masquerading as Labour when it's more Thatcherite than even the bloody woman herself - with a nice twist of REAL authoritarianism. That nice Mr Cameron talks a lot more about poverty and about freedom than Mr Brown.
GAUCHE's memories are valid but it will take something else, and more in the here and now, to convince youth that Labour is left-wing or that the Tories are evil fascist bastards.