Nipped over to Wythenshawe today with some Chinese food and a couple of Tsing Tao beers for my dad whose earlier plan to meet me in Manchester today for lunch was cancelled on doctor's orders.
My dad has voted Labour since 1945 and at 88 remains a Labour man but finds it mystifying that James Purnell is joining forces with the Tories on Welfare Reform.
As he said, it's strange that the Govt can find billions to bail out the banks yet benefit claimants are to be punished in the measures which are causing such widespread revulsion across the labour movement.
Aside from the morality of the issue,why does a Labour Government persist with these draconian "reforms"which, like the 10p tax fiasco, will cost us dearly at the next election?
It's time for all of us in the Labour Party and beyond who are violently opposed to this legislation to stand together and mount a national campaign -lobbying our MPs, getting out onto the streets and making it clear that we did not join Labour to punish people for being out of work. The Welfare Reform Bill is absolute anathema to anyone who regards themselves as a socialist. Let's mount the biggest rebellion yet -and stop it becoming law.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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8 comments:
The populist left needs to come up with some alternatives rather than pretending that the lumpen proletariat (i.e. the benefit dependent class) does not exist.
There’s an excellent exhibition at Urbis right now that shows how the Black Panther movement worked to raise political consciousness among black people who had found themselves in this social class. They ran impressive social programmes (including providing healthy breakfasts to many thousands of children; something kids born into poverty in Britain today would benefit from).
The lumpen subculture has always been a real problem. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels called them, ‘The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society…’ and warned of their reactionary nature. In ‘What is Fascism?’ Trotsky warned of their tendency to support fascism… and where do we find the BNP?
The actual definition of lumpenproletariat is "raggedy proletariat" and yes there have always been abusers of the benefit system. Forty years ago, when I lived in Wythenshawe, there were women who ran council flats of ill-repute, people in the pub who laughed at my dad when he came in for an after-work pint after a hard day's graft.But they remain a minority.
I have no liberal middle-class illusions because that's not the background I am from.
But this legislation is not about that.It's about forcing the ill, the disabled, single parents, into work, any work, and taking away their benefits if they don't comply. It's also about private companies making shedloads of cash at the expense of the unemployed.By all means offer people training,whatever they need to help them into work. A culture of punishment and retribution for the unemployed is profoundly unacceptable to the left. Purnell's "reforms" will be cheered to the rafters by the Tories.
@AN
Scratch an unreformed Marxist, find a bigot, sadly Susan, i suspect there are others on the 'left' who have that attitude.This is why i suspect the campaign aginst the 1997 Welfare Reform Act didn't take off.
Some of that language is disgraceful and your idea that only 'the lumpen' vote BNP is laughable. Haven't you read the secret list? Imagine if you said the same things about migrants, etc, (though you would never dream of it.)With people like you on the left, no wonder it is failing and flailing.Why don't/can't we have a libertarian left lke other countries?
Good luck with the issue, Susan
Anonymous.
1. I have never said only "the lumpen" vote BNP.I'm quite well aware rich people in Burnley. Halifax, and Keighley are among the subscribers....
2. In what way am I a bigot? I was merely pointing out that on the council estate I lived on way back in the 1970's there were a few people who abused the welfare system. They included women who earned extra money from prostitution ( leaving their kids abandoned while they did so) and men who pushed drugs or did "foreigners." ie untaxed work. They were and remain a minority The "broken society" Cameron talks of is a reactionary fiction.
3. No, I'm not a libertarian. I'm a socialist.
4. I'm not an "unreformed Marxist."
5. Why do people who want to write nasty stuff always remain anonymous.
On second reading, I assume anonymous was referring to Stephen Newton's post - views with which I do NOT concur.......
A literal translation may give you 'raggedy proletariat', but you need to read a little further to understand what Marx meant.
Yes he did mean people who laughed at your dad for working.
(I'm obviously amused to be labelled an unreformed Marxist.)
Yes, and the people who laughed at my dad are not the ones being targetted. They represent a tiny minority. I think your attitude to working people is pretty arrogant and unacceptable.
One of the things which struck me about the coverage of the Karen Matthews/Dewsbury issue was how the vast majority of those portrayed other than Matthews herself were clearly part of a strong community, most worked, and those who didn't were involved in the tenants group.
Sure, you always get a few people who take advantage, but the idea that somehow the entirety of people on estates like that one are part of a teeming underclass is exaggerated to put it mildly.
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