Yesterday my partner and I went for a meal in The Aneurin Bevan, in Cardiff. OK, it’s a Weatherspoon’s, but the photos and information on the walls reminded me that there was a time when passion and compassion existed in mainstream politics. Later we watched the News, followed by Question Time. On the news a doctor who had left Atos in disgust wept as he told how terminally ill people were being forced to attend medical assessments, and that the assessments (carried out, don’t forget, by an IT company) are skewed against the sick; while an apologist for the Government explained how this never happened and that they are helping the disabled into the dignity of work. Question Time was the usual blah blah about Europe and Syria. Beyond the odd smirk when someone managed to score a cheap point, there was no real emotion. And I must admit I shed a tear. Not just for the sick, the disabled, the unemployed; but for the helpless, the homeless, the abused, the cold and hungry – the victims of Capitalism. A short history lesson: Before the Industrial Revolution the peasants were at the mercy of the land owners. After it they became the working class, at the mercy of the factory and mine owners. The nature of Capitalism is that a few hold the wealth while the majority create it with their labour. So the working classes were abused at every turn – denied proper schooling, denied access to medicine, crammed into slums, starved and overworked so the rich could get richer. During the Victorian era some attempts were made to redress the balance a little by providing a minimum of education and care. Philanthropists made genuine attempts to help, but the lower classes were still an underclass, existing only to be exploited by the obscenely rich. There was no representation for them in Parliament. They were reliant on a few politicians with a social conscience throwing them the odd crumb of compassion. The majority lived short, back-breaking lives in squalid conditions. Read Dickens for the details – although he was coy about mentioning the thousands of destitute girls who were forced into prostitution rather than starve. Then, in 1900, the Labour Party was formed, in part by Keir Hardie, who started work aged 7 and was in the mines by the time he was 10. The Labour Party was originally, and for many years, a Socialist party, believing in public ownership of key industries, redistribution of wealth, free healthcare, good free schooling and support for those unable – for any reason – to work. This was not just an ideological manifesto; it was born out of a real passion for fairness and equality. Then, on the back of a huge majority after WW2, they carried out, successfully, every one of their plans for a better society for the poorest. Particularly the formation of the NHS. Some of the very rich became not-so-rich, the working classes began to be able to build a life for their families rather than struggling to merely survive, the middle classes found themselves happily sandwiched between the two. History lesson over. And now? Maggie started it by selling off all the silver and freeing the money men to be as greedy as they liked. We are now suffering under an unelected government which makes hers seem almost benign. The NHS is being cherry-picked by private companies; the tax payer is shoring up the banks while the execs continue to take massive bonuses for failure. The weakest and neediest in our society have been successfully demonised as the cause of all our ills. The poor are blamed for being poor, the unemployed for being unemployed and the sick and disabled for feeling sorry for themselves. The rich are getting so much richer they could – using only the extra money they have made since the crash – pay back everything the Government has borrowed and still have plenty left for yachts and new mansions. The poor are getting poorer while all the gains they made since 1945 are being gradually and deliberately eroded away. Meanwhile UKIP is making headlines and great strides by demonising foreigners. The Lib-Dems have shot themselves comprehensively in the foot by climbing into bed with the Cons, and Labour have become Conservative-Lite. Listen to them all; lying, cheating, rubbishing each other, speaking in sound-bites, using human beings as ammunition, changing tack if they think it will make the public like them better. No shame, no passion, no compassion. We have a choice now between horrifically bad, plain bad, or two laughables (you can add your own who’s who). What we need now is a new political movement which is based firmly on those old-fashioned concepts with which the Old Labour Party changed Britain: passion, compassion and care. We need politicians who weep at the sight of someone sleeping in a doorway, or sitting alone in a freezing flat because they can’t afford both food and heating; who get angry when they see injustice, inequality and prejudice; who want to raise up the weak, the sick, the needy, the oppressed, the vilified, the ignored. Every major religion in the world says we should treat others the way we would like to be treated ourselves, but you don’t have to be religious to believe the same thing. It’s called empathy. The real Left needs to unite and rewrite politics; to put forward candidates who will refuse to lie, refuse to talk in sound-bites, refuse to claim dodgy expenses, refuse to take their place at the corporate trough. Candidates who have known poverty; who hate injustice; who love human beings. I’m not talking revolution here – capitalism is living on borrowed time already. I’m talking about rebuilding our society from the bottom up so that nobody needs live in fear or pain or shame, or sleep on the street, or fight just to keep their head above water, or die alone and unnoticed.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 13:10:04 +0000
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