Labour- running away from its roots?

[RAM]

How come that labour seems to be leaving it roots? Take jobs when mines and shipping close down you would expect labour the working mans party to be for jobs. Also the parties seem to be coming together. So what’s the difference in them? Labour turning conservative?


Blair is trying to cover all the bases. Also the NHS has always been short of money even in 1949 the health secretary had to go and ask for more money. Simple the NHS not having enough money is old its not new.


(Edited by RAM at 8:19 pm on Jan. 16, 2002)

[peaccenicked]

The labour party was called by Lenin "a bourgeois workers party that exists to systematically dupe the workers"
Clause Four was merely a fig leaf to cover its real role.
Blair and the right are cocky as the left was too incoherent and divided and basically after Scargill left to form the Socialist Labour Party. The Labour Party is now
without a left cover, it is just like voting tory now.


(Edited by peaccenicked at 6:57 pm on Jan. 17, 2002)

[Son of Scargill]

Exactly!It is a sad state of affairs when I nearly voted for the liberals.Not that I wanted to,but it was closer(?)to my ideals than the other main parties.
found out 2 days before the polls there was an SLP candidate.......Phew!!!!!That was a close one.

I believe,if you get a vote,use it,but it can be hard when the choice is three different shades of the same colour

[Zippy]

When Trade Unionism died, so did the labour party. They give lip service to the workers now, but they are no longer in any way, shape or form, left wing.

I voted Labour, but only because it was my only real option.

Zippy.

[booga]

Quote: from Son of Scargill on 11:22 am on Jan. 17, 2002
Exactly!It is a sad state of affairs when I nearly voted for the liberals.Not that I wanted to,but it was closer(?)to my ideals than the other main parties.
found out 2 days before the polls there was an SLP candidate.......Phew!!!!!That was a close one.

I believe,if you get a vote,use it,but it can be hard when the choice is three different shades of the same colour


well its good to know im not hanging out with a bunch of "liberals" hehe. but really im not familiar with the thread topic, (only interested). the state i live in is a "right to work" state or "employment at will", no such thing as "union" there are copper mines and we pray in the name of "Jesus" at our school.

oh but what i wanted to comment on exercising your authority to vote, i mean what would the government think if every person voted? would that be "scary" for them or would it just perpetuate more propaganda? that would be something to WONDER about.

oh ZIPPY why do you say "LABOR" was your REAL option, may you explain? thanks. :)

(Edited by booga at 6:41 pm on Jan. 17, 2002)

[El Che]

Who is/was Scargill? and why are the Brits so conservative? i mean there left center party is right-wing, there right-wing party is ULTRA right and there left party (lib dem) is left center.... What the bloody hell is going on over there old chap?

and zippy, "vote with your hopes, not with your fears" or something to that effect.

[Moskitto]

Scargil is the leader of the Socialist Labour Party I believe.

Britain is a one party state, it's just the party changes every few years. Tony Blair is trying to turn the lords into a rubber stamp.

He even postponed the election during a pretty big crisis (Fuel Protests+Foot and Mouth+Floods) because it was blatantly obvious he couldn't win.

So much money is wasted. They raise taxes and lower spending and spend the tuff that's just disappeared on advertising how good everthing is.

In some respects even the Conservatives (particularly Lords Reform) are better, although most of the really famous back bench rebels are from Labour, but they all get deselected for not voting on the party line.

[Son of Scargill]

Booga,the 3 main parties in the UK have merged closer together over the past 10-15 yrs.The liberals used to be the centrist party,they have become the party of the left,but only because the labour party have shifted to the right.The conservative party are still the right,but they have been trying to woo the populace by appealing to working class concerns.As moskitto said about the reform of the House of Lords,the tories have a better plan for making it a real second house than labour,who just want to fill it with their cronies.I still wouldn't trust the tories because only a while back they were fighting tooth and nail to keep hereditary peers in the house of lords.They are just being opportunistic.

As for a 100% turn out for an election,it could be"scary".
About 40% of the population is apathetic regarding the parties,they see little difference in them,and like Zippy,if they do vote,they tend to vote for one of the big two so as not to "waste"their vote on a smaller party.
The common dissatisfaction vote though is the Monster Raving Loony Party.Their vote is increasing slightly year by year.If the dissatisfied voters turned out,you could see them in power.

Scargill is the leader of the SLP,but before that he was the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers,the last great union power.The 1984 miners strike was the end of this union power in the UK.Thatcher had changed many laws regarding the unions,the most important being the end of secondary picketting.Although it was a heroic struggle against the system,it was doomed to failure,it was a staged strike,by the govt.Unfortunately Arthur Scargill walked the miners right into the trap.But then,his only other option would have been to accept 140,000 redundancies,with entire communities out of work.

[Zippy]

Quote: from Son of Scargill on 8:55 pm on Jan. 17, 2002
... like Zippy,if they do vote,they tend to vote for one of the big two so as not to "waste"their vote on a smaller party.
I didnt vote Labour for the reason, i voted labour because that was my only option. I had Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and then, the wonderfull UK Independance Party. I wasnt concerned about wasting my vote - i was forced into it.


Quote: from El Che on 7:25 pm on Jan. 17, 2002
and zippy, "vote with your hopes, not with your fears" or something to that effect.
Im not bothering next time if i get the same choices. In the words of Michael Moore :-

"Dont vote, it just encourages them."

Zippy. :)

[Moskitto]

hey we had exactly the same parties standing in our constituency as you did.

[Son of Scargill]

Soz Zippy,I didn't know you had such a tough choice,not even the MRLP to send the message that the electoral process is a joke.that's crap!

(Edited by Son of Scargill at 9:37 am on Jan. 19, 2002)

[Zippy]

Quote: from Son of Scargill on 9:35 am on Jan. 19, 2002
I didn't know you had such a tough choice

It wasnt that hard - the lesser of all evils as it were. Its no longer a two party system, its just the same party with two seperate names.

Zippy.

[peaccenicked]

I would rather waste my vote than vote Labour.
Then buy a badge saying "don't blame me I did n't vote labour"

[ernestodekam]

It is like this in Australia. Our "left" party also called labor is so similar to the right wing "liberals" (HA HA) that it is not funny (not HA HA). It is actually sad. Thank god (figure of speech) Pauline Hanson has decided to steep down from the Nazi, I mean One Nation Party.

[Kez]

As long as we can control labour we are ok.
The true left of labour, the backbenchers are reeling the blairites back to the left, and with some success.

We cannot vote other than labour, until the communists get any real power whcih i doubt will happen for another minimum 10 years. To vote anything other than labour means to let the conservatives and liberals get stronger.

Comrade kamo

Also let us not forget that the unions are still pretty powerful, although not as good/bad as in the 70's

We musnt forget that the reason thatcher came in was because the unions fucked too much with industry, and people didnt vote the "union supporting" labour, so thatcher came and pissed all over the unions.

[Moskitto]

But the backbenchers aren't affecting the Blairites. Blair deselects them if they disagree with him, so no one disagrees with him.

Anyway the Liberals are way more left wing than Labour is, so why is voting for them a bad thing?

[peaccenicked]

As a socialist who is sick and tired of our tweedle dum tweedle dee mainstream political culture. Voting liberal
might eventually get us tweedle doh.
No longer should we accept the policy of the lesser evil.
All our governments follow the will of the major capitalists and the nuances of difference are not strong enough to lessen that abiding evil.
Make a stand . vote for a socialist candidate.
Or vote for the last remaining left labour MPs. Otherwise
write socialist or communist or anarchist on your ballot paper. Elections merely reflect the mood of class consciousness in the country and as people get disillusioned with the lack of difference at base with the three parties, that reflection becomes meaningless.

[Moskitto]

I would vote socialist if I could actually vote and if candidates other than UKIP, Conservatives, Liberals or Labour actually stood in my constituency.