Whilst Ken Loach harks back to the post 1945 Social consensus, his assumption of a Left united is fundamentally flawed. I went to the first screening of The Spirit of 1945 and listened to the live Q and A that was held afterwards. Great film I am in no doubt of, as it explored historically quite a few things, through the memories of others of how terrible it was before their was an NHS. People dying at home unable to pay for a doctor or medicines, homelessness and a real grinding poverty without a welfare state to speak of, other than that administered by charitable organisations and philanthropic souls. Whilst talking on the doorsteps last Tuesday night to talk to people about the upcoming referendum, one 85 year old weaver, remembers the late 1920s here in Dundee and the despicable conditions people faced living in Brown street around the Jute Mills, which are now that has been redeveloped into social housing homes today. She didnt first speak about the hazy and glistening lights of the post war social consensus of health, housing employment and welfare policy, but instead her memories that even in the darkest part of the early twentieth century, there were no food banks. People helped each other, a commonweal if you like between people. She was furious about today and the need for food hand outs and what kind of society have we returned to. Why do I feel that Ken Loach is flawed in his thinking is rather simple. He still believes in the solidarity of the working class behind a political party with a British Nationalist perspective. This myth needs to be dispelled with now, as it was done by all Westminster parties by the early 1990s. Its rhetoric of a bygone past nothing more. I have some wonderful Labour friends both here on facebook and in my own everyday life and I am repeating constantly, that this romance is like hanging on to an early love that is now moved on, got married and had a clutch of bairns, while you sip your beer at the bar reminiscing what could have been. The UK is not united politically and certainly not economically. The remotest lurch of a united left was when we had regional development agencies, measured our economy through GDP not footfall on the high street and when there was, prior to Thatcher a broadly common political consensus on what built a good society. Ken Loach pays not even the slightest bit of lip service to the progressive social democratic left movement here in Scotland, through Radical Independence and the SNP. That blindness caused by dogmatic faith to a Labour party, hollowed out and packaged off into the annals of history, means that for those of us on the progressive left, we have moved on and focused our energies where we can make a change and a radical one at that. The British Establishment are wetting their beds at thought of their plutocratic empire being challenged by wee Eck. Wrong bloody target chaps! The thing is, our First Minister is only one man and thankfully, realises that the seeds of opportunity being planted, is all thats needed to create grassroots agitation and demand. Everyday the grassroots movement enlargens, emboldens and speaks out. Everyday, the nonsense on stilts, we hear from Galloway to Carmichael, from Milliband to Lamont and from all the creaking lies being peddled by their civil servants in their reports of doom and gloom, drive us to work harder and determined, to end the smokescreens of Empire and the hazy hope from the romantic left of a phoenix of British National Left unity rising from the ashes. I love your films Ken Loach and they have played a large part in my social consciousnesss, but its time to get real and get with us.theguardian/commentisfree/2014/mar/27/ken-loach-labour-failed-left-new-party Chris Law
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:58:48 +0000
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