I'm going to do a corny Gordon Brown anecdote thing now and tell you about one of my local heroines .In his anti-Trident youth he too would have applauded the achievements of octogenarian peace campaigner Barbara Greene. This weekend, Greenham Common veteran Barbara was up at the Faslane demonstration in Scotland and I would not be at all surprised to hear she was one of the 160 protesters arrested yesterday as they marked the end of the year-long Faslane 365 campaign at the Scottish nuclear submarine base. Barbara is one of the many lifelong socialists who spent decades in the Labour party but left over Iraq. And, as things stand with the Government's backing for Trident, she is not coming back....our Party is all the poorer for it.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
LOCAL HEROINE FIGHTS FOR PEACE
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4 comments:
Agree Susan. The party is all the poorer to be without Barbara. However as per our recent discussions this is a vicious circle. Comrades leave, left wing MPs are de-selected, potential PPCs from the left have an uphill struggle, the right in the party have things their own way.
Logically all socialists, and Labour SDs should join or rejoin and stop the rot.
Otherwise there is simply more and more to complain about by the day.
You say "stitched up" I say "out plotted" and "out worked". The methods being used to de-select the odd MP and to win selections for house candidates are absolutely legitimate and within the rules.
Instead of being bunnies in the headlights the Labour Left need to be using the same mechanisms - maintaining and enlarging membership, maintaining relationships with members, being positive, winning support from Trade Unions and socialist societies and recruiting them as CLP affiliates and putting in the work.
Don't get mad get even.
Happy Birthday Comrade Press
I know this is an age in which hardly anyone cares about language but the lady concerned is not by any stretch of meaning a "heroine". She has not suffered in the slightest, just the opposite, she has thoroughly enjoyed herself and the minor celebrity that it has brought her.
The fact that she lives here and is free to enjoy her hobby because those Trident missiles finally helped tip the USSR down the toilet of history is the sort of irony that I doubt she would appreciate.
Get a sense of historical perspective. Trident, an essentially worthless heap of metal, brought down the USSR? What nonsense.
Kremlin archives show that Stalin didn't want a unified Germany, even under Soviet control. The most insane and dictatorial of Soviet leaders thought the West a necessary counterbalance to the re-development of nationalism across the European continent.
Freedom and democracy weren't maintained by force of arms - not to mention that the threat posed by the USSR was always overestimated in hindsight. Had the USSR driven its military all the way to London, they'd still have been overthrown in the end - and without nuclear weapons.
The nuclear deterrent was created because Britain wanted to cling to the pretence of imperial power. As much is evident from the Cabinet Papers of Clem's government. They wanted diplomatic parity with the emergent global powers - a parity which is unnecessary for a government which should have been more concerned with genuine socialist internationalism than geopolitics.
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