The King is Dead. Long Live the King

There are battles, and then there are battles. Some are worth fighting, some are not.

Back when Blair took over the Labour party I wandered off, ignoring politics in my disillusionment, forming a liking for Charles Kennedy, even voting Lib Dems once.

When Corbyn rocked up, I couldn’t believe it. I had it in my head that JC was the second coming. That he was going to bring Labour back to socialism, the way it was when I used to sit with my grandad and do the pools and watch the snooker.

I was born in the early seventies, so lived though a lot of crazy stuff as a child, the Falklands, the Miner’s Strike, the troubles in Northern Ireland. Spitting Image was how my childish mind made sense of it all. I was incensed with Thatcher over the school milk thing, and my grandad told me Tories were bad. When he had the opportunity to buy his council house for next to nothing he wouldn’t, as he said social housing was for people that needed it. He lived in council houses for the rest of his life, downsizing as he went, before dying aged 92.

To me, because of his influence, socialism was a thing that just made sense and you never questioned it. It just was. The Labour party was an institution, like British Telecom, and Royal Mail, and British Rail and all the things that existed and were reassuring, and to be relied upon.

I didn’t quite understand what was happening when it all got sold off. There was no logic to it. My brain didn’t think in a capitalist way. The way the world became revealed to me made me disillusioned to the point that I felt I could no longer engage. So apart from turning up and dutifully voting Labour every time, even though they seemed to be creeping ever further away, Corbyn gave me the kind of impetus that makes you actually join a party, and join I did.

I watched closely as he became a hero, and I watched closely as he fell from grace. I grew frustrated with his silence over Brexit, I became angry at his fence sitting, but I still wouldn’t hear a word against him. I still won’t. I met him, for a split second when he visited Haverfordwest inSouth West Wales – our local constituency county town – a few days before the election, and he gave me a hug. That positivity and elation stayed with me, right up to the moment that the exit poll was released.

I went to bed. And decided I’d had enough of politics. In the meantime, my pre-election spamming on facebook had got so intense that I got reported and banned from posting for seven days.

Bored, and feeling like I had no voice, I wandered over to the old Twitter account I’d made ten years earlier, and starting floating around in there. I saw George Galloway had just started a new party. I watched the launch video and read the website. It said to be a member you had to get involved. I didn’t want to. I was sick of shouting and not being heard. But as the weeks passed, and I started to calm down, I realised that the same was happening as when Corbyn appeared. There was something here that might be worth fighting for. I had a chat with George, and ten minutes later I had left Labour and joined The Worker’s Party of Britain. It was that easy.

I travelled to Birmingham for the launch rally and met George there. A nicer bloke you couldn’t meet. Unassuming, no airs and graces, great hat. By the end of the day, and after all the talkers we had heard, I was more inspired than I had ever been by Labour. Everyone was on the same page. Everyone had a shared vision. The atmosphere in the room, filled with kids and friends and happy people, was one of family. And that feeling has continued. We have meetings online every week, a great side effect of the Coronovirus, in that we were forced to be creative about replacing the cancelled rallies. Hopefully this is something that will continue. Keeping in touch in this way ensures we all keep engaged, and we are encouraged to get involved.

There was never going to be a better opportunity for a socialist party, in that our capitalist government has been forced to turn to socialism to bail it out. The capitalist failures were exposed in less than a week, and the country doing the best out of everyone, really, is Cuba.

Socialism doesn’t work, we keep getting told. That seems to me to be false, even more false now than ever. The Covid-19 crisis has changed things like never before, without warning. Capitalism has been dying a slow death; just hanging on, waiting for the end, a long, drawn out illness making it ever weaker. Covid hasinstead been the equivalent of a sudden accident, a car crash where capitalism finds itself with fatal injuries.

It surely can’t recover, yet we know our corrupt governments will not rest until they’ve found a way to save its life, and they’ll keep it on life support for as long as it needs to be, until it recovers. Someone has to be bold enough to sneak in and turn the plug off.

Who will that be? It’s not going to be Labour. They’;re not holding anyone to account. The recent leaks throw up spectacular questions which we may or may not ever know the truth about. Labour isn’t the King of the working classes any more. It hasn’t been for a long, long time, since way before my grandad gave them credit for, but he was born in 1905, and was a product of his time.

Labour are making him turn in his British workman’s grave. If he was alive today, I believe he’d join me in abandoning ship. You don’t stay in a boat with a hole in it, not unless there’s a good engineer on board. But let’s be fair, a knight of the realm is never going to be much good with a spanner….

There’s only one choice for socialism now, as far as I can see. Galloway has always stayed true to his word. What other politician has? Yes, he’s changed his mind when presented with evidence, and that is the mark of a wise man. When people know what I’ve done, they say.. BIG BROTHER!!!Yes he was on Big Brother, but if your only cultural reference of George is that, then I’m afraid you may be part of the problem my friend. Get on youtube and watch his 43 minute speech where he rips the senate to shreds. Ten minutes in, you’ll have forgotten all about that leotard.

Imagine if they’d told him to be a cat and he’d refused. What a pussy that would have made him. When you’ve got the bollocks to put that outfit on and raise a fortune for Palestinian kids, then I’ll let you make fun. Until then, you’re missing out bigly if you use something so trite to stop yourself from joining a party that is welcoming, true to its principles and its members. That is starting form the ground up and where your voice will be heard. Where you can learn so much from the amazing people that are on board. Joti Brar, deputy leader, is a legend in her own right, and the party is growing every day with people from all other parties, or with people that have finally found a party that works for them.

Labour is gone. It’s time to step up and be brave. To be the change and see the change.

The King is dead. Long live the King.