A fisking of Labour schmaltz
You know that a political party has lost the will to fight when it starts to place its faith in the past, rather than working for the future. Doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook at the moment is a campaign from a few Labour members to have a 2 minute video entitled ‘Against the Odds’, first broadcast at this year’s party conference, used as one of the party’s Party Political Broadcasts.
The video opens with lots of grainy black and white historical footage and a voiceover seemingly intended to make the listener identify with the lovely, cuddly Labour Party. Except that it doesn’t, partly because the voice itself is so depressing and also because the video just makes the viewer start a count of the fudges and inaccuracies contained within the video and voiceover. The end result is a portrait of a party that is not waving, but drowning. Let’s examine the words and images of the video:
“They said that working people were not fit to govern – so we formed the Labour Party”
A party where the intellect, stimulus and money was supplied by the decidedly middle-class Fabians and their friends.
“They said that women didn’t deserve the vote”
This glosses carefully over the fact that Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the main suffragette movement, WSPU, was refused membership of the Independent Labour Party after she was encouraged to do so by her friend Keir Hardie. The refusal was on account of her gender. Several years before her death, Emmaline became concerned by socialism and joined the Conservative Party. We are of course still waiting for a woman to be elected leader of the Labour party, let alone become a Labour Prime Minister. The legislation to extend an equal franchise to women was brought in by Baldwin’s Conservative government in 1928.
“It seemed impossible to stop the tide of fascism, until Cable Street and a few good men and women got in the way”
The ‘good men and women’ were not organised by the Labour Party. Sadly the riots led to the Public Order Act that outlawed political marches without permission. We can see its authoritarian legacy in New Labour’s recent ban on protests near Parliament.
“The shining vision of the NHS was for many an impossible dream, until we created it”
The legislation may have been enacted during a Labour government, but the NHS was down to Liberal economist and reformer, William Beveridge, after a report was commissioned by the wartime coalition government. Only three years after the introduction of the NHS as a free at the point of use service, the Labour Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell pushed through prescription charges of one shilling per item and charges for half the cost of dentures and spectacles.
“They said we were wasting our time making a stand against apartheid and that things could never change, but they did”
At the 1964 general election, most candidates expressed support for sanctions against South Africa, But once elected, Harold Wilson told the press that the Labour Party was ‘not in favour of trade sanctions’. And whilst the best known anti-apartheid campaigner is now a Labour MP, he was then very much a Young Liberal. The release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid owed nothing to the UK Labour Party.
“And Northern Ireland too”
Tony Blair may have got the credit for the grinning photos, but the Prime Minister who made the Good Friday agreement come about was John Major, bravely and often under verbal fire from his own side.
“The history of Britain is the story of fighting for the right thing against the odds: Sir Alex lifting the Cup; Dame Tanni reaching for the line; JK Rowling opening rejection letters from her bedsit in Edinburgh”.
So let’s show three Labour supporters/enoblements and say that their success is all down to Labour? How? Why? If I wanted to be picky, I could point out that both Sir Alex and Ms Rowling were already successful under a Conservative government and that Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson won most of her Paralympic medals under a Tory government. But that would be petty party politics – and not even my party. I could also point out that Manchester United winning anything is not ‘the right thing’ in my book!
“The dream to bring the pleasure of reading to our children”
This from a government where reading has become mechanistic under the ridiculous target-driven regime of SATs and the National Curriculum and where few pupils now read a whole book, being subjected to a series of excerpts under Labour’s curriculum.
“So here’s to the fighters, the true Brits. The ones who never gave up, who came from behind to win the day”.
At this point the film shows Michael Foot (who lost once), Neil Kinnock (who lost twice), Tony Blair (who certainly gave up on Labour principles to take power) and Gordon Brown (who has never won and certainly looks to have given up).
“We can succeed – because we must”.
Said in a voice which loses all attempt to be cuddly and becomes quite menacing – like the two sides of Orwell’s Big Brother.
When a campaign for the presentation of tomorrow’s Labour Party gets the support of an Labour dinosaur like John Prescott, you know this is going to end in unmitigated 1980s labour disaster. And hardly anyone cares …
Update: One of the worst pieces of schmaltz that I couldn’t even be bothered to comment on was “They said the son of a miner could never become a minister. But no-one told Nye Bevan“.
So I thank Matthew Barrett for this informative comment on his blog:
“When did they say that? They didn’t, because it obviously wasn’t true. Miners had been ministers in several Labour governments before Attlee’s. For example, the Labour Secretary for Scotland, William Adamson, was an ACTUAL MINER, not just the son of one. So Nye Bevan is completely irrelevant in this.”
Tags: Gordon Brown · Labour · Tony Blair
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- Is Blair a very naughty boy?
- Godwin’s Law and Labour arrogance
- So who’s right: Labour activists or Prezza?
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