This election is going to be one of, if not the hardest elections the left has ever fought. The ruling elites don’t like Corbyn, the monied elites don’t like Corbyn, the main stream media almost all don’t like Corbyn, the BBC, meant to be the nations impartial broadcaster, doesn’t like Corbyn, the Tories, moving ever further to the right, don’t like Corbyn, Daniel Finkelstein, a Jewish Tory Lord, speaking to British Jews via the Jewish Chronicle, writes, “If Jeremy Corbyn and his followers do not suffer a gigantic defeat in this election, it will be an utter, complete, ghastly disaster for Jews.” The Labour Party Blairites don’t like Corbyn. Much of the nation, responding to the relentless negative press and propaganda, doesn’t like Corbyn. Even educated fleas don’t like Corbyn (sorry about that). And, of course, none of them like Corbyn supporters, against whom the kindest of the many names used, ‘Corbynistas’, is spoken with disdain and contempt.
This was a recent Tweet to me about socialism, “It’s a failed experiment that some insist on endlessly repeating. Thankfully the majority understand this.”
Given all that, and that’s a lot of ‘that’, it’s surprising that the local elections returned a single Labour win, if all we had to go on was all or any of the above.
Unsurprisingly the Tories are still ahead in the polls and given that all the vast majority of people have to go on is the main stream media it would be wholly surprising if they were not and the uncomfortable truth is that the Tories could win in June and with a clear majority.
As a simple test to find out what people know about Tory policies, may I suggest asking around a bit, friends, supermarket check out people, people in your church, neighbours you might chat to, I don’t think you’ll have to try too hard, ask them if they know the NHS is being taken apart and privatised. No more than that, although they may ask what you mean and you might tell them it is being broken up and given to private companies like Virgin. From their answers and even their questions you’ll get a clear idea of how much or little they know.
If they know nothing, they aren’t sheeple, stupid or ignorant, but the sources of news they rely on in their busy lives have simply failed to inform them what is going on, wilfully, deliberately and with malicious intent.
People aren’t generally stupid, but they are creatures of society and habit and most people simply don’t question that, or the media, and why should they? Activists are always a social minority, most people want to get on with their lives and most people lead busy lives (yes, including activists) and is it so great a crime to want to get by and not have to deal with the complexities of politics? And, godammit, they are complicated and they are complicated by slick talking, money grubbing, snake oil salesmen out for power and money.
The problem with Jeremy Corbyn, and don’t they just have a problem with him, is that he talks plain speak, plain English, and the career politicians have no answer other than to mock, denigrate and slag him off and those who support him.
Socialism hasn’t failed. Our NHS and our system of social security, those bastions and triumphs of socialism, aren’t failing, they are being dismantled by a right that is cunning, deceitful and brutal, full of its own grandiosity and greed.
How many times have you heard, “Why should I pay for them (poor, unemployed, disabled, old people, you name it)?”
When have you ever heard socialists screaming over the years, “Why should we pay for you?” Health, education, university, fire services, ambulance service, police, GPs, our vast national infrastructure, libraries, legal aid, etc.
And then there are all the benefits that organised labour and the unions have fought for – weekends, paid holidays, maternity leave, 40 hour working weeks, retirement ages, occupational health and safety, workplace pensions, the right not to be sacked for getting married, having a baby or being ill, the list goes on.
But do let’s hear it for the bankers, “Why should we pay for you!?!” And all the corporate scroungers, “Why should we pay for you?”
Never have I heard it said, “let’s have a cut off point, a level of income at which you can sort all your own shit out, every last whining, whinging, ungrateful bit of it.” It would be impossible to make it work.
Yet now, out of spite and media hate fuelled prejudice, people want to cut off their own noses to spite everyone including themselves, they want to sacrifice the benefits of socialism they’ve enjoyed all their lives because they hate the idea that other people are getting something out of it as well, and perhaps a bit more than them at this moment in time.
If there was any truth in advertising and without relentless propaganda, it is the Tories who would be unelectable and who would be vilified the length and breath of Britain.
The fact that the ruling elites, the media barons and the exceedingly wealthy, who do everything in their power to avoid contributing to the tax pot, detest Corbyn should really speak for itself, but the efforts and money they expend to trash him works.
Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most, if not the most, electable Labour leader and future Prime Minister the party has ever had. The battle we have is not to prove he is electable, it is to battle the power of the wealthy propagandists and the ruthless Tory campaign war room backed by enormous wealth and employing unscrupulous masters of the dark arts of perception management.
Social, citizen and independent media has never been more important that in this general election and for the able bodied to hit the streets to get the honest message across that Britain needs and deserves to hear. Labour does not need to deceive, the Tories do. Labour wants to rebuild the nation after the Tories have spent seven years dismantling it and they’ll finish the job if they get back in.
KOG. 10 May 2017
https://www.thejc.com/comment/columnists/corbyn-must-lose-for-our-sake-1.437827
https://www.fleetstreetfox.com/2011/11/what-have-unions-ever-done-for-us.html
