Lost in Rochdale

(Or Gordon goes deaf in the mill towns: Did you say ‘Flocking?’)


In the summer of 1960 I decided that I would spend my week’s holiday hitch- hiking to Fort William in order to climb Ben Nevis. To cut a long story short I finished up bouncing around in the mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire before escaping with the help of a lorry driver who to my good fortune was heading for Glasgow. As a southern 16 year old those mill towns were a bit of a shock with the girls sitting out having their lunch break, all looking like Gracie Fields.
I have since learnt quite a bit about life in the mills, the hardships of the working people and especially the noise that caused many of them to go deaf due to the clatter of the machines. I now know that Rochdale has the proud claim to be the home of the Rochdale Pioneers who brought us the idea of the co-operative movement and it is this bundle of memories which makes Gordon Brown’s electioneering gaff all the more distressing. He is, as far as I am aware, of sound hearing, but he wasn’t listening to Gillian Duffy, and for some time hasn’t been listening to Labour’s traditional voters.

Of all the places to visit this surely was a Labour homeland, albeit having been represented by Cyril Smith for the Liberals for many years. This was a place where Labour’s record and plans for the future should have been articulated at their clearest with the help of the many faithful lifetime Labour voters who would find it unthinkable to vote for any other party. Gordon’s Black Wednesday was to bring none of this. Like Tony Blair before him he seems to have paid little attention to history and presumably thought that a succession of handshakes and small talk would suffice.

Unfortunately he was introduced to model traditional voter, Gillian Duffy, whose working class tradition of speaking out would normally have been a credit to any Labour constituency branch. Such is the shallowness of modern political life that this grandma was not heard but dismissed as a bigot even though as a person concerned for the future of her grandchildren she wanted to hear Labour’s plans. Whatever impression the film footage might have given, the now well known interlude of accusing anger, says much of Labour’s loss of vision and connection with its roots.

Gillian Duffy was a sure bet for a Labour vote but the signs of disconnection were already showing. The 10p tax controversy and the ridiculous purported correction which Gordon Brown claimed to have made and the whole fiasco of immigration and asylum seekers are the most obvious. Gordon Brown’s slogan, ‘British Jobs for British people’ if it had any meaning at all, was too late. The Labour Government rejected delaying open borders for those seeking work and, getting its estimates wrong, jumped in with both feet. It appears to have had no inkling of how working people would perceive this. Was it really all about having cheap strawberries for much of the year! Unfortunately not, it was about the arrival of a great deal of competent workers who would provide added competition and keeps wages down. Worse still, it was providing much needed skilled workers when the Labour Government since 1997 had undermined the value of acquiring practical skills and promoted the higher education route.

It has falsely raised the aspirations of many young people who in another age would have been the proud and natural recruits for the modern skilled workforce we need. While Polish plumbers were fully employed, many British youngsters were finding it extremely difficult to find a place on a plumbing course at their nearby college, while those who went to university had to take on part time work to supplement the crippling debt which crippling fees required. As a result the quality of their university experience has been reduced, aided and abetted by the dash to acquire funds by overvaluing researchers and regarding good teachers as unimportant. How many stories have you heard of lecturers who regard the teaching as a chore attracting no kudos, or of post-grad students teaching with poor communication skills?

Not surprisingly the cartel of older universities has managed to keep the impact of this muddled expansion to a minimum, and exploit research funding to great advantage. For a generation of Labour politicians who benefitted so much from free higher education this speaks of Jack and his ladder with more to come in further education with practical skills courses already being cut.

Whatever the complicated reasons for this influx of labour from the EU or elsewhere, it is clear from listening to the many debates and watching the faces of the audiences, that a large proportion of working people remain unconvinced when they see the lack of jobs, houses and investment in areas like Rochdale. If a party seeking re-election is unable to respond in a convincing manner, and does not appear to even listen to its thinking and articulate supporters, is it any wonder that some people exploit the job shortage/immigration ratio, imagined or not, for their own unpleasant political purposes. It should not be forgotten that many potential Labour voters will not all have the principles which prevent their sense of betrayal leading them to the extreme right. Mrs Duffy has chosen not to vote at all, whilst others might be thinking of ‘flocking’ elsewhere thanks to Labour’s failure to stay in touch with its roots. Let us hope that the Rochdale incident reminds people of what the Rochdale Pioneers represented and what New Labour never seemed to understand.

Postscript: The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday won the exclusive interview rights with Mrs Duffy and it would seem that the editor was happy to print her story without embellishment. Presumably on the basis that its speaks for itself. The interview story was accompanied by an excellent piece by Rochdale girl Liz Kershaw.

See also: Michael Collins, author of “The Likes of Us: A biography of the White Working Class”

The co-operative movement and the Co-operative Party seem to have been hidden behind the aristocratic embrace of the Labour Party establishment for too long and it is ironic that suddenly the merits of companies like the John Lewis Partnership are now expressly referred to in the Labour Party Manifesto. It is ironic on several levels. A party which has had so much faith in British management and bankers now recognises that employees are very much third fiddle to Directors and shareholders. Would it have anything to do with the popularity of their products with MP’s when refurnishing their homes at the tax payer’s expense? Too little too late me thinks.

That said the John Lewis Partnership and the co-operative models are ideas whose time should have come years ago. Let’s hope they are not forgotten in the coming hard-times we are about to enter.

Cometh the Hour: Goeth the Man: as the Wootton Basset Cortège Lengthens time is running out for Gordon Brown

I apologise for this somewhat gloomy article but as I sit here on this hillside with the mist still clinging to the fields this is the political landscape I see. These things will pass and some sunlit uplands will eventually appear. When that will happen and how it will be achieved is not for my failed generation to determine. Any ideas, especially from those involved in the political process, would be welcome.

As I predicted in a post some months ago (Sunday, 19 July 2009 Gordon, do you Remember Vietnam?) , as the number of deaths in Afghanistan mounted so too would the pressure on Gordon Brown. With the latest loss of life and further concerns about inadequate supplies of equipment we are assured by the Prime Minister that he has done his best. Unfortunately at some time or another we all have to recognise that our best is not good enough and I am afraid that, judging from his demeanour, he is beginning to realise this. His administration seems to be sleepwalking into an election without any real clue as to what it is doing and with no hope of winning. Is this a parallel with Afghanistan? Whilst we probably have some sympathy for a man that has been severely damaged by the failures of Blairite New Labour I can still find it in my heart to have some sympathy for the poor devils who will inherit the Brown portfolio of muddle and indecision. Will they do any better? I have my doubts.

It should not be forgotten that the funding and procurement strategies which have lead to the present peacetime budget for a war all started when Gordon was running a tight ship at the Treasury which was cutting back on defence budgets. The procurement of unsuitable equipment has been known of since the Iraq War and now the consequences showing in another. It is therefore no surprise that support for the Afghan War is fast evaporating and that the Sun newspaper is now starting to turn the electioneering screw.

As the public contrast all this with the support which has been given to the bonus junkies, previously known as bankers, with the increased taxation for the rest of us, they will see that the New Labour train, now in its Brown livery, is fast heading for the buffers. It is remarkable that within this decline time is still being found to emasculate Parliament and bring in changes without debate. MPs still allow a hyper-active Executive to undermine an increasing number of our civil liberties in the retreat from Democracy to Bureaucracy. Sleep walking into disaster seems to be catching with so many MPs no longer conscious of the fact that they are supposed to scrutinise legislation. So much so that their nods have now rubber stamped a vast volume of guillotined measures at the behest of the Home Office and the Association Chief Police Officers.

With a hopeless Government comes a hopeless electorate in the sense that they will have lost both the will to vote and any belief that our democratic system can be taken seriously. Our present Secretary of State for Defence for example is now putting forward the nonsense of a policy which will no longer defend vast tracks of Afghanistan but will concentrate resources to defend populated areas. This is not defence, but a managed retreat, and presumably proceeds on the assumption that the nice Taliban will not congregate in large numbers in the vacuums thus created, before encircling prior to delivering the fatal blow. It should be noted that the Taliban’s choice of transport, the small motorcycle, is already an improvement on the push bike of the Vietcong.

If our political leaders cannot properly support our armed forces, then why should the British public support the war? We have now come to the point where leading military men are doing the work of government in telling us that the war is necessary to prevent terrorism in the UK. This is not their job. Our so called elected leaders should be doing this but it would seem that even this is now beyond their limited talents.

Unfortunately we now have to watch the dying stages of this Rump Parliament and this incompetent Government with all its dreaded consequences. Our political classes have failed and there is little chance that we will get anything more than a bunch of apparatchiks to replace them who have got to Parliament by the modern route of party worker or research unit placeman. No wonder the details of the election debate cannot yet be faced by any of our political parties. They all know that whatever the outcome the result will be unpleasant. In the meantime I fear that Al Qaeda will have moved to Somalia and that British Democracy will still be waiting for a bed in Intensive Care.

Making a Virtue out of a Necessity: Or, Trident Lite

Having been a ‘ban the bomber’ on those marches in the early sixties I still feel guilty at having failed. I also still feel guilty that underneath all of my marching, speecheefying and giving the thin blue line a bit of a run around, I was always thinking, ‘I hope those Marxist Fascists over there don’t march in when we get rid of these stupid bangers’. By the seventies I was thinking, ‘Well if they do we will go down with our own personal bang which is probably better than inflicting it on the rest of the planet’. Little did I know that the peril to be inflicted would come more from a global economy which made some very affluent, others very poor, and all of us heading for hell in a bucket.

What is my point? Just hang in there a second. Well, at least I recognised the perils and had to decide what the right route was in moral terms. There were those among us then who had no such doubts. Bertram Russell was one, Canon John Collins another. The Canon had been a bomber pilot at the time of Dresden with Hiroshima and Nagasaki yet to come. Not only listen to your radicals but listen to those who have seen into the abyss. Between the two perspectives we all know that ‘MAD’, i.e., mutually assured destruction, is not a defence mechanism but a suicide pact. Against such people I used to feel a bit of a moral coward, and I think I still do, as it is easier to be brave when you have had a great life.

This really does bring me to my point. Why start proclaiming that we will reduce the number of our Trident submarines down to three from four? Come off it Gordon! You know as well I do up here in the agricultural hills that your mini ministers have done so much to undermine, that you can’t afford to do anything else. You can’t really afford three Trident Subs, let alone an ID Card Scheme not to mention a properly conducted land war in Afghanistan. You have written on ‘Courage’ and now is the time to put that noble concept into practice and have the courage to set out the reality. How about saying, ‘We cannot afford a nuclear deterrent so we will reduce it, and at the very least, we will make every effort to further multilateralism’. Not exactly the moral high ground but at least it is honest and will take a bit of courage to express. You have nothing to lose. In any case, and this will appeal to your fragile political judgement, the environmental flip over point might well be reached before anyone actually has to press the button. At least one thing is pretty clear by now. It won’t be you on the hotline to Washington or to Naval Command at Northwood authorising any such depression. Your vaporisation will have already occurred within the next 9 months. ‘Another fine mess you’ve got us into......’

Dacier

Oh no! It’s that man again!

To my mind a retiring characteristic is sometimes sad because the person concerned can sometimes have a lot to offer in the line of good company. Unfortunately it seems that this is a characteristic which does not seem to be possessed by politicians. It is now widely recognised that Winston Churchill took on one premiership too far and that Margaret Thatcher would have done herself more good by retiring gracefully to a more therapeutic life style. Tony Blair is no exception. I was one of the many who now have to confess that I thought he would make a big difference for the better. I now feel betrayed and embarrassed while he no doubt thinks he did a great job.

If a great job includes expanding police powers, undervaluing the right to silence, more privatisation, failing to see that the bankers were taking us to the cleaners, failing to maintain a public housing programme and going into two wars, one without the kit and the other without the truth, then the boy done well. That is no doubt why he became a peace envoy for the Middle East and the promoter of inter faith knowledge, and now, could become President of the European Union. Surely he has done enough. Having recently seen his speech to his annual conference some fourteen years ago about how the elderly would no longer have to put up with poverty in their retirement etc .and then hearing the news last week that the present government is still coming up with ideas for self-funded insurance policies for residential care. I decided I had had enough exercise in the cringe department.

With New Labour’s betrayal of their voter base and more and more grand promises that cannot be delivered, ( and with earlier promises being broken e.g. the troops in Afghanistan will get everything they want!), I am now one of the electoral homeless awaiting some credible politicians to come up with some deliverable policies which might actually do something about the accumulating problems of youth unemployment, social injustice and so many other problems on the downward spiral of incompetence that has got this nation where it is. One thing I am pretty certain of is that whether or not Mr Blair becomes President of the European Union will make not a bit of difference, apart from making EU summits a bit awkward for Gordon.

Gordon, do you Remember Vietnam?

I know Bew Labour politicians are not too hot on history but our author PM, especially one who has written a book on Courage, should be a bit more locked into what is going on before his eyes, day after day, week after week and, sadly, month after month. Why Vietnam should be remembered is because it was the home coming body bags that proved the last straw for the American public in the undermining of the war effort. Warriors on push bikes were difficult to defeat. The Taliban are fond of their lightweight motor bikes and Improvised Explosive Devices and the region is well known for it’s artisan gunsmiths. Thank goodness the huge losses the Americans took in Vietnam have not happened but I would have thought that if the PM wanted to win this war he ought to listen to the people who know an awful lot about that unpleasant business and to have some regard for history.

Some nameless characters got the procurement of helicopters wrong some time back now, not the commanders trying to cope in Afghanistan now, and it wasn’t them who decided to cut expenditure on defence. The reason we haven’t got enough Chinooks lies somewhere within a government which has cut back on defence spending in time of war to near 2.2% of our Domestic Gross Product. If this bloody war, and bloody it certainly is, is so important to maintain a terrorist free Britain then we ought to start listening to those who know how to fight a war and starting to pay for it through the anonymity of the tax system. Instead we are paying with the lives of youngsters and top notch soldiers who sadly will never be nameless now their names are being carved on memorials and written in Books of Remembrance throughout the land.

Gordon Brown is now well established in our political history as the dithering PM. At the moment we are again witnessing the denial stage. How long will we have to wait for the next stage, a belated change of policy, when we a shift from the ‘Land Rover War’ to the helicopter war? Since conjuring up helicopters can’t be done immediately the Government is cornered and I would estimate that we will have to wait for about another 50 respectful homecomings in Wootton Basset, before we see a new policy which seeks to get Gordon out of a corner his old Treasury department gas created. It might be sooner if that rate increases, but without helicopters any new policy will have to be pretty good.

Gordon, I would suggest that a quick call to your predecessor in his Ivy League college would probably allow even him to do some research for you on the body bag count and its political consequences for the US Government as it came to terms with defeat in Vietnam. I would also suggest you buy one of those new combined moral, political, historical and financial compasses, as your present model is clearly not up to the job. You should also remember that Iraq and Afghanistan are first wars where are fallen are being brought home to remind us youngsters are being killed. There is still a slim chance that we might win this war which you claim is so crucial. If not, then you had better line up the air troop transporters for an ignominious withdrawal, or should that be a fleet of buses for the overland journey. Going by coach is so much cheaper.

Dacier