Let me get this clear right at the very beginning of this
blog in that classic McCarthyite response ; I am not, nor have I ever been a
member of ….. any political party.
Although I have been interested in politics since a teenager and I have flirted
with various political organisations, I have never felt captured enough by any
individual politician or party to actually join up as a member. My political activism has always taken the
form of organising activities and attending rallies and meetings .
Although my politics has always been broadly
left wing I always found my personal beliefs and opinions at odds with the
likes of say the Socialist Worker Party or the Labour Party. Although influenced by the ideas and writings
of such great Labour stalwarts as Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan and I was lucky
enough as a young man to be represented by that Labour legend S.O.Davies party politics never had any allure for me.
At
election times I have tended to vote Labour as broadly I suppose I support them
more than anyone else and up until the last general election I have always lived
in a Labour constituency but on occasions I have voted for other parties.
In February this year I had attended the Welsh Labour Party
conference in Swansea, not as a party member or supporter but because my work
had sent me. Ed Milliband had been there
and quite a lot of the other Welsh Labour party hierarchy and it had struck me
how staid, static and smug they were in their skins and quite confident at the
time that they were poised to return to power.
Obviously, as we know now, that was not to be the case.
Following the 2015 general election I felt increasing
disgust with the UK election system due to the blatant political machination of
the media, who were obviously supporting particular powerful elite interest groups and an electorate that
seemed to be becoming increasingly self-cantered , isolationist and frankly xenophobic,
hence the growth of dreadful parties such as UKIP.
When the Labour party
leadership contest started I was sort of vaguely aware of Andy Burnham and
Yvette Cooper but really had no idea as to who Liz Kendall or Jeremy Corbyn
were. If you had asked me at this point
who I would have supported I would have unhesitatingly said Andy Burnham. However, as the contest developed, although I
have to admit it was not something I was following too closely, my opinions
started to change. I quickly started to
realise that although I had no idea as to who Liz Kendall was her utterances
seemed completely at odds to what I thought Labour was. Obviously the party had changed quite a bit
from last time I had paid any attention.
What really bought the difference to the candidates home to
me was the welfare vote in July. Harriet Harman the interim leader of the party
had said for Labour MPs to abstain??? WTF was that all about??? Yet another attack on
the poor of this country and the leader of the supposed party of the working
people of this country is saying to abstain??? At least one of the candidates
Corbyn had the courage to vote against it.
That is the first time I remember him coming to my attention. It was also the time that Burnham and Cooper
started to go down in my opinion. Why, if they were against austerity did they
not vote against this attack on the poorest in society?
Increasingly the name of Corbyn was being brought to my
attention mainly through the attacks the other candidates and others within the
party were directing toward him. What was it about this man and his politics
that they were so afraid of particularly considering he had been an MP for so
long? I did a bit of research and
reading about his background and history and saw that he wasn’t the ordinary
Oxbridge PPE party apparatchik, he was someone who had stayed true to his
values all his life, something that seems incredibly rare these days.
I began to talk with friends, colleagues and
on Twitter about the upcoming Labour party leadership contest and other people
were picking up on the difference of the Corbyn campaign. I said I had some sympathy for his approach
and people urged me to sign up either as a member or supporter to vote for
him. I did seriously think about it but
decided I would have been a hypocrite as I had never been involved in the party
before and who was I to say who should be their leader. My attitude was, let them pick their leader
and then, if they pick Corbyn I might consider joining. That, in itself was a pretty major change on
my behalf as I had never ever considered joining a party before.
In August Jeremy Corbyn came to speak in South Wales. He spoke at a number of venues but one was the
Aneurin Bevan memorial in the Sirhowy Valley This is an historic venue, where Nye Bevan
used to hold open air meetings and somewhere right in the centre of my stomping
ground. I turned up at the meeting more than
anything to see what the fuss was all about and because it was a nice afternoon
to spend walking about the mountains of my beloved Welsh valleys. I turned up early as I thought there would be
a good turnout. Although I turned up a good three quarters of an hour early
there was already a good crowd there and more than that there was a real carnival
feel already. The Red Choir were already
there. Being Wales we have a strong choral
tradition and the Red Choir have been going years and they often perform at rallies
and political meetings. People were around chatting and talking of the buzz of
the Corbyn campaign. People were
catching up with friends and family and there was a real “valleys” feel to the
event.
Then the man himself arrived. No fanfare, no announcements, no hyperbole,
he just walked in to the midst of us and started chatting to people, you know
like a normal human being. No minders,
no security, no obvious hangers on he just walked in to the centre of the
gathering and started chatting. I was stood chatting with a group of friends a
couple of yards away and one of my group just went over and started chatting to
him in a very natural way. When I had
been at the Labour party conference earlier in the year I just couldn’t have imagined
that happening with Ed Milliband.
Corbyn then started to address the crowd, very unassuming,
very naturalistic and not a particularly good public speaker. He started to talk about the historic
significance of the spot but more he talked about the late great Ray Davies.
Ray was a local councillor, activist and character that I bet most local people
in the crowd had come across at some time.
It was obvious that Corbyn knew Ray as a person, it wasn’t as if he had
been briefed by one of his aides, he had connected with the terroir of the South Wales valleys, no mean
feat in itself and something that cannot be faked.
The man talked, I
wasn’t particularly impressed or overwhelmed but I just thought here is a
genuine guy and that in itself, I am sorry to say in this day and age, is an
impressive quality in a politician. He spoke, he took questions and there was
discussion and debate. No spin, no managing the event, politics as politics should
be, ideas not personalities. I was impressed by the approach, the social
movement not by just the man himself. Although not a great orator the man spoke
with passion and from the heart. Without
notes or script but with genuine conviction, when was the last time we saw that
with all our staged managed politicians?
Well to cut to the
chase dear reader that night when I got home I signed up as a Labour party supporter
do you know why?? Because I could see hope, I could see a vision of a different
way of doing things moving away from the bland, self-centred and self-obsessed
politics that seem to have dogged us since the late 1970s. Although I had
previously had reservations I wanted to be part of this opportunity to change
things.
Since attending that
meeting on the mountains of Sirhowy I have been increasingly disgusted by the
antics of the other three candidates, including Burnham, in their personal
attacks on Corbyn which he has had the good grace not to react to. Who knows what the result will be?? I cannot believe the Labour Party machine will
allow a Corbyn victory as there appears to be those in Labour who think they
know better than democracy. This I believe is a real opportunity to change
politics in the UK. Even if people don’t
think that Corbyn is the right person to be the next Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom he is the right person, indeed the only person on offer, to lead
the opposition to this hateful destructive Tory government for the next five
years.
