« Gored... slight return | Main | New link »

Who has abandoned who?   » Permalink  |  TrackBack (0)

It is often difficult to tell whether Tom Harris is joking or serious, or seriously ignorant. Surely it is either the first or the third when he writes in this post...

My maternal grandfather had been a great fan of Tony Benn in the 1960s (and was therefore a natural recruit for the SDP when it was formed in 1981).

However, the fact that he once voted for Shirley Poppins' SDP, and was once a member of the Conservative Party can come as no surprise to anyone, even if they hadn't read it in an earlier post. It must have been the eventual dawning reality that his best chance of jumping on the Parliamentary gravy train in Scotland was not as a supporter of the SDP or the Tories that led to his rapid conversion to democratic socialism (loud guffaws all round).

Harris then proceeds to tell us that Alice Mahon has resigned her Labour membership, and implies it is all down to the events surrounding McBride over the last week. Well, as this article shows, Alice's resignation is about a damn site more than that. But for some reason Tom doesn't want to tell us that it was also about privatising public services and failing to tackle the excesses of the bankers, and the welfare Reform Bill, and the slavish following of George W. Bush and his illegal war in Iraq, and support to the Israeli Government as they commit war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon, and the continued massive war spending in Afghanistan whilst pensioners have to decide whether to eat or heat. Nor the continual manipulation of selection panels to try to ensure that only the lobby fodder who would support all of the above, and worse, like Tom Harris, are selected in winnable seats.

Much easier if you try to heap all of the blame on Damien McBride, eh?

As someone who has been a Labour Party member much longer than Tom Harris, and who would rather have had my eyeballs pierced than voted for the SDP or joined the Conservative Party, I would like to say to Alice Mahon, I don't feel abandoned by you Alice. I feel abandoned by those careerist politicians who have done their best to rip the heart out of our Party. I'm just sad that it is no longer ours.

Just see how much you can see about the Damien McBride scandal of last weekend you can find in the full text of Alice's letter of resignation to her CLP Secretary:

Dear Martin,

I am resigning as a member of the Labour Party and I wanted the local party to know before I make my decision public.

First, I would like to thank you and my friends in the party for your comradeship and support over the years. This has been a difficult decision to take as I feel I was almost born into the Labour Party.

However, I can no longer be a member of a party that at the leadership level has betrayed many of the values and principles that inspired me as a teenager to join.

You will recall when I stood down I said that after the illegal decision to wage war on Iraq I could not have served another term under Tony Blair's leadership.

With hindsight I should have resigned then, but I thought this would be very unfair to Linda Riordan and labour members putting themselves forward for election to the council.

I also hoped that we might go back to being a really progressive and caring party should Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as leader.

In the event I could not have been more wrong.

Despite all the evidence and in the face of the credit crunch, Gordon Brown's obsession with privatisation such as the Royal Mail is inexplicable and quite simply wrong.

Labour had its chance after Blair to get its finger on the pulse in the country, more social justice not less.

That chance was squandered with catastrophic results.

He has shown not one jot of contrition as he continues to privatise what is left of our public services.

At the same time he has failed miserably to tackle the corporate greed of the bankers.

As to foreign affairs, it becomes clearer by the day that the Labour Government cooperated with the Bush regime as they rendered whoever they judged to be guilty of terrorism to despotic regimes who tortured them and offered them no access to the legal process whatsoever.

Our ministers shame us in front of the world when they give their support to the Israeli government as they commit war crimes in Palestine and the Lebanon.

Brown has just announced plans to send another 900 troops to Afghanistan, billions to be spent on an unwinnable war and pensioners dare not turn on their heating because this Labour Government will not tackle the energy fat cats.

On the domestic front we said in our 2005 manifesto that we would not privatise Royal Mail, we lied.

That same manifesto promised a referendum on the European Constitution, we re-named it the Lisbon Treaty and reneged on that promise also.

If this Treaty is ratified we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services. Article 111-147 is clear, we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs.

The misnamed Welfare Reform Bill now going through parliament is something the Poor Law Guardians would have been proud of. This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for inflicting this on the British public just as we face the most severe recession any of us have experienced in a lifetime.

This assault on the poor and disabled is taking place at a time when former Labour Ministers still drawing an MPs salary, line up on an unprecedented scale to take up lucrative consultancies with private companies, that as ministers they previously had dealings with.

I have written to Gordon Brown about this, he simply passed me on to a civil servant. This personal greed and possible conflict of interest did not appear to concern him.

My final reason for leaving the party is because it is no longer democratic. The personally vindictive, dishonest campaign played out on the pages of the tabloids by certain Labour party members to deselect Janet Oosthuysen was despicable, but even more shaming was the behaviour of the NEC who have uttered not one word of criticism about the Home Secretary's behaviour on expenses, but have ruined the political career of an excellent candidate whose only crime
was to scratch her ex partner's car.

The undemocratic nature of that selection continues as the reselection has been conducted without much transparency and is now subject to complaints from members of the Calder Valley Party.

Quite simply I have had it with New Labour.

Yours in friendship,
Alice.