Labour not fit for Purpose

The next noise you hear

will be the Labour’ foundling pioneers turning in their graves

The Investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party and the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn has led again call for Labour’s replacement by a new party of the left.

Timing being all there maybe a case for “not yet” as the right wing continues to make Labour unfit for the purposes that lie in its roots.

The Labour Party, founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties in 1906 its first two MPs were a Keir Hardie a miner and Richard Bell a railwayman.

Labour though at its best at local level and at Westminster held together and made some progress in government and out with the representatives elected from the best of the shop floor, local councils and left intellectuals in alliance.

In 1945 the 1930’s depression remembered returning service personnel helped elect in its early years a reforming Labour government stopped in its tracks.

It’s been downhill ever since with right wing Labour regimes followed by years of Tory power. Keir Hardie and the Pioneers’ aims of an equal opportunities society to one of inequalities with the poor still with us.

Labour’s strengths were once a socialists vision, trade Unions solidarity and unity of purpose: Socialism went with Blair and clause 4. The Trade unions were destroyed, along with Britain’s industries, by Thatcher’s anti union laws. Leaving Labour short of members, money and intellect.

Corbyn’s “crime” was to harken back to the pioneers demands signalling a gleam of socialism in Labour’s 2017/19 manifesto’s welcomed by the electors sabotaged by the right.

The void left by trade unionists and socialist MPs has been stuffed with career politicians and matched by the Tories: The choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The irony in Corbyn’s suspension is that his leadership echoed Labour pioneers socialism and mass membership funding. Both in dire jeopardy.

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