Before I begin this,
let me set the background. I come from a traditional, working-class background
in the North of England. My mother is English, but the child of Irish
immigrants to Britain in the 50’s. My family has, more or less, voted Labour
their entire lives and would not dream of voting for anybody else. Whilst I
have followed George Galloway and the Respect Party for years, I did not commit
to being a member until several months ago.
I was in Gdansk a few weeks ago, having
treated my grandmother to a holiday for all her support during the three years
I have been at University, when I stumbled across the news that veteran Labour
MP, Dennis Skinner, had been voted off the Labour National Executive Committee.
I was immediately infuriated; Skinner is one of the few true Labour politicians
left in the Party. Much like George, he stands for many of the things which the
Respect Party is championing alone: an end to austerity, the support of
trade-unions and, above all, equality and peace. However, his Party have
abandoned all of those concepts and adopted the Conservative policy of refusing
to end austerity measures and promising to be ‘tougher than the Tories on
welfare’. With Skinners removal, it is clear that the Party is going for a
younger, more centred approach to try and emulate Tony Blair’s success in 1997.
They may have some nice sound-bites (regulate energy companies, free childcare
and decentralisation), but nothing of substance and certainly nothing which has
enticed me to support them come 2015.
Already apathetic and
disillusioned with Labour and any major party, I had considered cancelling my
membership with the Party there and then. Then the real kicker: Miliband has
been silent over the recent events in Gaza which have seen roughly 600
Palestinians die and several thousand injured in the indiscriminate (or
‘precision’) bombing of innocent lives. Miliband, on his trip in April to
Israel, had publicly denounced the increasing illegal settlements but has never
gone as far as to publicly condemn Israel for its horrendously poor treatment
of the Palestinian people whom they subject to a life of internment and poverty
on a daily basis. What has happened to the man who looked likely to bring
Labour back to the left, to return to its stance as the Party of peace and
opportunity? His silence is, to me, as bad as Michael Gove’s admittance that he
is a ‘committed Zionist’ and the USA’s constant defence of the Israeli
government. It seems tragic that the UK, who was complicit in the USA’s killing
of over one million civilians in Iraq, is still comprised of leaders not
willing to learn from its mistakes and immediately order sanctions on Israel
until it ceases raining death over Gaza, sit down at the table with Abbas and
finally broker a deal which will see the Palestinians receive fair and just
compensation for the misery to which they have been subjected.
That, for me, was the
final straw on a very strong back, and so my membership is now in the post. I
refuse to support a Party which has adopted a name for which its policies do
not represent, and I refuse to vote for any Party which does not have a firm
commitment to equality both nationally and overseas. The Labour Party is dead;
what remains is a walking frame of opportunity which regularly gets overlooked
and increasingly sucked in to the political centre. What remains is something
which will soon be considered like it will help no-one, speak for no-one and
can be trusted by few. If first-past-the-post was abandoned, the Labour Party
would be forced to kick itself into gear, to become a party which people would
want to be a part of. As it stands, it remains little more than a bleak
alternative to the Tories. I am convinced that, if Labour does indeed succeed
come May, it won’t be because they’re a party of change. It’ll be because
they’re the better of two very, very poor choices.
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