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Writer's pictureSocialist Labour Party

Pit closures condemned generations to jobless communities

Updated: Aug 9, 2021


The collapse of the so-called "red wall" which contributed to Boris Johnson's huge majority in the 2019 General Election was totally unnecessary Chancer Johnson seems to be the only one with presence of of mind in the political jungle to understand that voters in the referendum meant what they said. They wanted Britain to leave the European Union. Perversely Labour wanted confirmation that people meant what they said in 2016. They didn't need a second referendum because the 2017 election and some other local elections confirmed this.


Voters in the vote leave constituencies included mining communities and generations who wouldn't vote Tory in a million years. Clearly the Labour Party presumed this to be the case and ostentatiously ignored their voters. So again the result of the 2019 general election gave an unmistakably clear message that the expectation was - as promised by Cameron, Corbyn and everyone else you can think of - that the result of the 2016 would be honoured. It seems the message still isn't clear enough and instead of addressing this the current Labour Leadership is intend on bringing back some "has been" discredited former leaders to hammer home socialism will destroy the party. That view was not shown in the 2017 election result and arguably if Corbyn had stood by his former principles, long held widely in the Labour movement, seeing the European Union as a bastion of neoliberalism. Tony Benn had pointed out that it had a Capitalist mindset and countered any Socialist advances wherever and whenever it could. The advance of Socialism in any E.U. country would depend on them regaining independence as a nation.


Now that the U.K. has succeeded in becoming independent (that is as far as the deal made allows - even Norway, not part of the E.U. is subject to E.U. law which is capable of overruling domestic law relating to labour rights and so on ) it has the opportunity of moving to a just and equal Socialist future. With Boris Johnson's statement about Margaret Thatcher's closure of coal mines bringing on a greener and brighter future those former mining and industrial communities whose employment opportunities vanished, a repeat of a strong vote for the Tories would seem remote. However it seems that Starmer and his crew have other ideas and are now treating the Blair era as a golden age. Since they left power they are characterised by their attraction to wealth and privilege, indistinguishable from the Tories.

John Tyrrell 8/08/2021














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