Monday, 7 October 2019

Britain's future depends on Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister


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Laura Pidcock,  Chris Peace, Chi Onwurah, Lauren Dingsdale, supported by Nick Brown, Ian Lavery and Jeremey Corbyn at  Newcastle City Hall, Saturday October 5th, 2019


For four years, I have warned that the wealth and power of national and international, financial and other business interests, combined with the latest 1984 micro surveillance and communications control technology, would do whatever was considered necessary to further a British “American Dream” using the criminal, the personally ambitious, the racists and the misogynists to further their cause. For the past three years I also warned that divisions within the Labour party over Brexit, international and defence policy and between neo liberal and socialist economics, would prevent Jeremey Corbyn becoming Prime Minister of a socialist leaning government. 


As I told members of Jeremy’s campaign team in 2015, although I agreed with everything proposed in his prospectus to be leader, I was not going to vote for him for two reasons. The most important was that it was time for a power shift from men to women in general and for the Labour Party in particular. I also feared that that Jeremy’s Parliamentary and Public record of consistent international peace making, opposition to all forms of racism, support for anyone the subject of injustice and unwillingness to compromise political principles would divide the Party, given that the majority of those elected to House of Commons or awarded seats in the  House of Lords accepted international capitalism, the structure and approach of the British ruling institutions and had become out of touch with the response of the native white working class to the open borders of  the enlarged European Community. 


The only thing which surprised me about the result of the 2016 referendum was that the majority to leave was not greater, given the impact of the planned austerity, the extent to which Nigel Farage played the race card and Tory Party leavers promoted the kind of retrospective nationalism which combined with racism had brought Hitler to power over most of Europe.


As I have also continued to remind of what became evident when attending in the mid 1980’s, a four week international senior general management course at Henley, the hatred of those working at director level in both public companies and former nationalized utilities of public services with principles and standards; the wisdom of moving headquarters to countries with stable governments and low corporation taxation rates and moving production units to countries with stable governments and little or no trade unionism to keep wages low; the need for world wide relationships with competitors to minimise the power of individual governments; a contempt for politicians who could be bought; and the importance of strengthening the European trading mechanism in the context of the development of the other international trading blocks and the emergence of China as a world dominating economic power.  I spent six months digesting the components of the course, ending with an overview  paper, sending a copy to Michael Heseltine, the Member of Parliament for Henley on Thames and a lifelong European. To my surprise  he not only replied but said he was distributing copies throughout Whitehall just before he resigned from Office. I received one follow up response from the Human Resources Director at the Ministry of Defence in relation to the historically proven reality that political, financial, business, social projects will all fail in their stated objectives unless you are able to recruit those who share, are committed, and trained to achieve the objectives.


Teresa May, who had shown strength of character and courage during her tenure as Home Secretary, took the right  decision to call a General Election in 2017, knowing that she had little prospect of getting a balanced deal with Europe over leaving the European Community without being able to combat those who formed the European Research Group within the House of Commons and reducing the evident opposition from the Labour and Liberal democrat parties for Remain, Ending the threat posed by Jeremy Corbyn was only one factor. She evidently underestimated, as Tony Blair and others have since admitted, the personal ability of Jeremy  to communicate with people, based on his proven record  and coupled with the growing awareness among well educated, thoughtful, responsible and caring people of all ages and backgrounds, that change was needed and that the re-emergence of the kind and level of politics which brought Donald Trump to power in the United States of North America had to resisted.


It is clearly evident that Mrs May failure has brought the British people to a moment in our history where the choice is between Government by those of the dark or by those of  the light. It is as simple as that.


It would be wrong to be carried away by the fact that 2000 people in the North East accepted the invitation to listen to Jeremey Corbyn at Newcastle’s Civic Hall on Saturday, learning of the meeting on the Monday and of the venue on Friday and arrived in their hundreds over an hour before scheduled time and then queued for upwards of hour along opposite directions of Northumberland Street just to make the point we know difference between an honest man and a self-interest unscrupulous liar. 


The odds, it has to be admitted are still stacked against us, and putting off the General Election is essential until we leave the EEC with no deal at the end of October, the present most likely outcome, or achieve a delay which should see the Tory Party old order rid  themselves of Boris, and where I can  still see Mrs May, Jeremey Hunt, Phil Hammond back in temporary charge.


The two aspects of the meeting on Saturday which gives me hope, was the repeated applause when the platform speakers echoed Jo Cox, there is more that unites than divides, and we will not let the passionately held differences about Brexit derail the issues to be decided at the next General Election, and secondly the strength and quality of the next generation of Labour women ministers.


The first speaker was the Laura Pidcock, first elected as the Member of Parliament for North West Durham in 1997 and appointed Shadow Minister of State for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy in January of last year whose prepared speech was delivered in a manner which matched the mood of the audience as well as saying what we wanted to hear, following on from the electric, passionate and empathetic mood throughout the Brighton conference.


The response of those sitting immediately around me was one of WOW, this is someone who will be at the forefront of the Party in the future.  Back home I discovered that Laura comes from a political family and that as a child she attended demonstrations against Thatcher and apartheid, obtained a degree in politics at Manchester University and in 2012 completed a master’s degree in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development. 


I have spoken with Chris Peace, Labour’s candidate to win the marginal seat of North East Derbyshire before and who at present is the Cabinet Member for Health and Care on Sheffield City Council . We had  a chat at the entrance to Big Meeting as she handed  out leaflets and pressing for support for an independent inquiry into Orgreave, which Jeremey announced from the platform later that day and Diane Abbot will announce on her first day in office as Home Secretary. Chris is a qualified teacher who then qualified as a criminal lawyer.


It was also good to hear again Nick Brown, who spoke at a Momentum members meeting in Newcastle several years ago. He has been chief whip for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and  for Jeremy since 2016 and since then has organised parliamentary defeats against Cameron and May before  achieving defeats for every vote  Boris has attempted since  the Tory party chose him to destroy the One Nation party. Nick, a southerner like me, by birth, also went to Manchester University, moving to Tyneside in 1978 when appointed legal adviser to the GMB and elected a Newcastle City councillor in 1980,  before his election as Newcastle East M.P. after the sitting member defected to the SDP. His role in keeping the Parliamentary Party together should not be underestimated.


Ian Lavery, the Wansbeck Northumberland MP  who  is one of the proud sons of Ashington along with the footballing Millburns and Charltons  and cricketing Harmisons and Mark Wood among many others. He has been Chairman of the Labour Party since 2017 and is one of two National Campaign Coordinators, a role for which he is well fitted. He is very much traditional North East Labour of the kind who made my life as a chief officer for 18 years difficult although I never forgot that such individuals reflected the reality of the life of the men in their communities.


After the interval, the tone of the meeting changed, because of two of Labour’s highly intelligent future female Ministers. The Member of Parliament  for Newcastle central, Chi Onwurah, is not a natural soap box campaigner but is one of several Labour Shadow women Ministers with interesting backgrounds. Her Newcastle born mother married an educated Nigerian who successfully studied to become a dentist at the Newcastle University Medical school back in the 1950’s when racism in the North East  and other industrial northern towns was strong.  Born  in Wallsend, then in Northumberland, and now North Tyneside, she went with her parents to Nigeria in 1965, a few months after her birth, returning with her mother two years later when the Biafran War commenced, her father joining the Biafran Army. In 1987 she graduated from Imperial College London with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I believe one of the few qualified engineers in the House of Commons, working on both hardware and software development and with work experience in the United States, Demark, France and Nigeria while also studying for a master’s in business studies at the Manchester Business School.


Chi is one of Tyne and Wearside Members Parliament, also rooted in the traditional trade union and Labour movements of the North East, a firm supporter of Remain, supporting Andy Burnham and the Owen Smith in the two leadership campaigns and this was recognised by the initial response of the audience to her contribution compared to those speaking before her. My impression is that people did listen to the wisdom of what she said, underlining that despite strongly held differences in approach  and on individual  issues  we had to come together to achieve a Labour Government.  


I knew nothing of the speaker, Lauren Dingsdale, chosen to introduce Jeremey, the Labour candidate for Conservative held seat of Middlesbrough and South East Cleveland, whose diminutive youthful appearance masks a powerful intelligent political brain which saw her gain more than twice the votes at selection than a local woman councillor. Lauren also trained as a lawyer after graduating from Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and with help from throughout the region should quickly become a member of the extended government team.


Risking the commentators curse, ever since Boris was elected the Tory Party Leader and assumed the office of Prime Minister, Jeremy in both manner and what he has said, looks a man who knows he will be the next Prime Minister because of the hundreds of thousands of individual members of the Labour Party who will do what is required to ensure that he is. This explains the willingness of the Scottish Nationalist Party to work with him but not the Liberal Democrats, who  fear as much as the Tories, that once in position  as temporary Prime Minister to prevent a No Deal Brexit, the myth created as  Bogey man will be ended and the Lib Dem hopes of spearheading a new centre right party will also end. 


The message  given by the 2000 who queued around  Newcastle Civic Hall for an hour or more on Saturday is that come the General Election 2000 will become 200000 thousand and counting.

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